Prologue

I don't have many roots in literature or academia, so reading and writing never took up a significant portion of my life. I was raised traditionally, and although I grew up in the west coast of Canada, the population was mostly East Asian. As such, I never identified much with the appeal of popular fantasy or young adult novels.

As part of my traditional upbringing, I didn't do much outside of the path my parents predetermined for me as a child. After the age of 3 when my piano training began, I had little time outside of it to do anything else, including school and hobbies. The majority of my reading were textbooks of music theory or history; the books that we were assigned at school I rarely took seriously, since grades were never a major concern.

Near the end of highschool, I made it very clear to my parents I had no intention of going down this path, and they slowly loosened up. During that time, I discovered Haruki Murakami at the local mall, and have since bought and read all his books that were made available to the West. Outside of his novels, I haven't read much after I finished his collection. Beyond classic literature and novels, I've always enjoyed manga as the struggles depicted in the stories were more relatable for me.

For media in general, I feel like I also have a very narrow view, as I wasn't exposed to much in my childhood. I didn't get to experience much of music outside of classical until I was in my teens, and movies until I started at Ringling. While I'm very capable of analyzing Bach fugues, I'm severely lacking in experience and ability to analyze stories.

Hopefully, this class will force me to experience media beyond my field of knowledge, and help me become a critical thinker.