Harry Potter and the Wizarding Generation

It began at different times for all of us. It all ends 12:01am, July 15th, 2011.

Now it really ended sometime after July 21st, 2007, but none of us wanted it to end. So we procrastinated until this Friday, after which there will be nothing new left for us to marvel.

If you don't know what I'm talking about, you neither read this post title, nor are you a part of it. For me and other like-minded individuals around my age, I believe we are defined not by Gmail, Facebook or iPhones, not by texting or auto-tune, not by Youtube or Barack Obama. We are first and foremost the Harry Potter generation.

Now we all like to think we found him first, and that when we read the books we delve into a fictional world with our friends Harry, Ron and Hermione. We know their intricacies and personality quirks, and we'd prefer to curl up in bed and think about them then think about our real friends, who have also spent time in their room reading copies of the same pages. It's odd that an experience so personal can be simultaneously so collective and communal. Such a phenomenon is truly unprecedented. P.S. I'm well aware that I'm on the more fanatical side of this generation - though I have stopped short of carving a lightning scar into my forehead, I have tried to live my life like I was auditioning for Gryffindor.

So yeah, I grew up with Harry. Like I've said, I wasn't the only one, but I was put squarely in the middle of his incredible fictional/real life trajectory. Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone came out June 29, 1997 but kids weren't lining up blocks outside the bookstore on June 28. Most of us heard about this boy wizard a few years later. I was in 5th grade (late '98) when another student told me about it and I picked up a hardcover from my elementary school's yard sale (true story). At the beginning of the book, I was 10, Harry was 11 and neither of us had ever heard of the Philosopher's Stone. (By the end of the book, I still hadn't, because the American version was idiotically renamed the Sorcerer's Stone) That first book was legitimately a children's book, meant perfectly for someone of my reading level at the time. I was hooked sometime after Harry received his owl, and immediately wanted the sequel after I finished. At the time, Chamber of Secrets was not out in the US yet, but I somehow managed to find Amazon.co.uk in the pre-Google days, and ordered the book. It said that it would ship within 2 days, and I figured the flight from England was only 6 hours, so I'd have it in 2 days and 6 hours or so. I was so disappointed when it took a week to arrive.

Looking back, because those books were so easy to read, they didn't attract the elder generation. I made my whole family read them, and although my brother and mom got into them, my dad thought it was just amusing. For me, I had never seen anything like it. I'd read plenty of fantasy before then, as well as captivating mystery books and other children's classics. But JK Rowling created a subtle magic world. An underground magical community hidden from everyday life in the UK was at once more relatable and more exciting than an imaginary realm like Middle Earth. As absurd as it may sound, we put ourselves in Harry's shoes more than we ever put ourselves in Matilda's, and hoped that this world was real and that we might get our own owl soon enough.

Then Prisoner of Azkaban came out and everything changed. We were perhaps too young to be cynics, and thus the revelation of Sirius Black's true character caught us totally unaware. The new imaginative magic continued (Marauder's Map, time turners, Animagus) but the story definitely took a dark turn. The books were getting longer and scarier, and while this one ended in a relatively happy ending, Rowling was warning us. When the Goblet of Fire came out, we would have to take the plunge with Harry into the unknown (and adolescence). Rowling broke us in gently, by introducing death into the series to a relatively minor, but lovable, character. By this time, everyone we knew had at least tried to read the books, and the overwhelming majority of us loved them. The US and UK publishers had gotten together and were releasing the books at the same time. But we were all forced to wait a few years in between books, with Order of Phoenix coming out 3 years after Goblet of Fire.

Now as a generation, we were used to disappoints. From the Star Wars series reboot, to the Y2K bug to Michael Jordan's comeback with the Wizards, we'd seen our share of overhyping. But the Harry Potter books never disappointed. Sure they weren't perfect (more on that later), but every other summer, though we might spend uncomfortably long waiting at the bookstore, we would never regret it upon finishing. The series kept us guessing and turning the pages. Rowling knew how to play her cards, always revealing progressively cooler and cooler stuff the more into the series we read.

Finally the day before my 19th birthday (while Harry was 17-18), Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows came out. I don't recall being more excited for anything ever, and I honestly may never be. Though I had reread the 6th book dozens of times (I wasn't the coolest college freshman) combing for clues into how Harry was going to find the horcruxes, Rowling again led us on an unpredictable roller coaster. Though I considered the ending a little anticlimactic, it was essentially ending an 8 year saga encompassing most of my life, and I don't know how it could have met expectations short of actually casting a spell. I read the book straight through from midnight to 7:30 in the morning. When I got to the part where Harry saw Snape's memories, I cried while reading for the first time in my life. When I finished the whole series, I probably could have cried again but I was too exhausted. I slept that morning, and for the first time, I got older while Harry stayed the same.

So maybe when we see the movie, Harry will finally be no longer with us. For a series that was in one sense an epic Bildungsroman and a generation that by many accounts took longer to grow up, perhaps this is a fitting symbol to the end of our generation's youth. It certainly comes at an interesting crossroads in my life. But this isn't about me or about reading too much into the release of a movie. It is however about how Rowling and Harry actually affected us.

For starters the books covered just about everything you could about coming of age. We go through insecure times, through bullying and bad parenting, gaining acceptance, achieving success, bad grades, first loves, searching for employment and all the trials and tribulations that come with true friendships. It almost sounds trivial to state it, but we follow Harry from his bedroom in the cupboard underneath the stairs to savior of the Wizarding world. However in between, Rowling touches on just about everything else. Among the topics that are prominently and liberally examined include racism, government, media, war, sports, legal systems, education and fundamentals such as love, power, religion, free will and of course, death. This entire Wizarding world that she creates is a full functioning entity complete with laws governing the nature of magic and laws instituted by the Ministry of Magic. Her writing style, while never of Shakespearean elegance, spanned the gamut from page-turning thrilling, to subtle mysterious, to downright simple and funny. I don't think Rowling gets enough credit for her dialogues, so many of which are spot on, or her humor. Outside of comical writers like Douglas Adams, Rowling is legitimately one of the funniest writers I've read and the Weasley twins two of the best comic characters.

Now I don't want to exaggerate the influence of Harry Potter. 450 million copies of the series have been sold, which is a lot, but if you do the math, 450 million / 7 * 1.5 (my guess for # of readers per book) you're looking at just about 100 million readers worldwide, or 1 in 70 of the world population. The bulk of these readers are most likely distributed between the US and UK around my age group, although the worldwide impact of Harry Potter is well-documented. The book has been translated into 67 languages including Basque, Faroese, Khmer, Mongolian and Ancient Greek. I can personally speak to its spread in Hong Kong and India, and because translations all came out after the English version, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix became the first ever English-language book to top the best-sellers chart in France. I know plenty of people that didn't like it, or outgrew it. I also know plenty of people who throw phrases like Muggle and boggart in normal conversation and have learned from the books that "death is but the next great adventure." I'm not an English professor, but I understand if the books are disparaged as popular fiction and not to be compared to the works of Hemingway, Joyce and Fitzgerald. But I also know that the books are well written, and that times have changed. The masses have become more educated and maybe nowadays a digestable work can still be a classic.

In all, my favorite book was the Half-Blood Prince, followed by Prisoner of Azkaban. My least favorite was Goblet of Fire (you'll see why below). I'm not a huge fan of the movies in general, but they have their moments. In almost every moment, there were chapters towards the end where I literally would have had to be pried away from the pages. No book was without surprises.

Finally, I want to write about Joanne Rowling. If you asked me any time in the past decade the three people in the world I'd most want to have dinner with, the world's first ever billionaire author would have been included every time. Her speech at the Harvard '08 graduation is one of the most inspirational I've ever seen, and has gotten me through many a rough morning. I can tell from that and her writing that she is truly a great woman, having persevered through incredible challenges while never learning her idealistic nature. Because she wrote most of her books there, I consider Edinburgh to be an inspiring city and made a "pilgrimage" there. Even more incredible than her books is her own personal story, her modern day rags to riches story. I would seriously like nothing more than to meet her.

Fun facts about the Harry Potter series:

-Hermione was not a familiar name to most readers initially, and most of us didn't know how to pronounce her correctly. I remember saying Her-mee-own for the first 2 books. In the 4th book, Hermione actually pronounces her name in the book, which I'm convinced is in order to fix all the fans butchering her name.

-The same book features the biggest plot hole. The whole point of the Triwizard Tournament eventually is revealed to be a massive plot to get Harry to touch the Triwizard Cup, which is actually a portkey. This massive plot took months to develop and could have gone wrong in any number of ways. Meanwhile, a portkey can be literally ANYTHING, and Barty Crouch posing as Mad-Eye Moody could have created a portkey at dozens of points during the year. This book features many stories and characters that have no relevance to the larger series plot, and so while it was great to read at the time, it rereads the worst and is my least favorite book.

-In the 6th book, Horace Slughorn calls Ron "Rupert" by mistake, a likely reference to Rupert Grint who portrays him in the movies.

-Ireland's win in the Quidditch World Cup may have convinced me to study abroad there.

-The code to get into the Ministry of Magic via telephone booth is 62442, which can spell Magic on a phone.

-Harry and Rowling are both born on July 31.

-Platform 9 3/4 is now an actual tourist attract in King's Cross station.

Ad-libbing liberal sentiments

I read a really interesting article today about multiculturalism in Europe and the pitfalls of various policies to either incorporate or destroy multiculturalism. I have quite a lot of views on the matter, but I still need to sort them out. In the meantime, I do just want to write about a few other views that I feel very strongly about. This isn't like a manifesto or anything, but I do feel the need to talk about some pressing social issues.

Same Sex Marriage

As a Bostonian living in Washington DC, I've spent nearly the entirety of my life surrounded by liberals, including my gay best friend. The culture that I'm surrounded by is one where displaying homophobia is a cardinal sin and thus homophobes, not homosexuals, are the ones who are alienated and disparaged. Same sex couples don't really surprise anybody in the city anymore, something that might not have been true even 10 years ago. Still though, it's not an easy step coming out and most who do have difficult stories, often dealing with family members.

I guess I can't speak for large parts of this country, but certainly here the LGBTQ community is quite accepted. And yet, once this word "marriage" comes out, much opposition arises, often from religious conservatives. It destroys the sanctity of marriage, ruins the institution of a family. As someone with strong religious conviction about the sanctity of marriage, I nonetheless come to the opposite conclusion and would like to espouse a view that I just don't hear very much. Marriage is supposed to be sacred because it is the ultimate goal of a relationship. Human romantic relationships are supposed to be about connecting two individuals as soundly as possible, emotionally and physically. Idealistically, I believe that relationships are not about having fun or messing around, but finding someone you love more than yourself and will continue to in perpetuity. Now this doesn't mean you have to approach every single relationship as a potential engagement, and everyone has to practice or learn from failed relationships, but I don't believe in a long-term relationship with someone whom you know is not a potential spouse. So taking away the possibility of marriage among same-sex couples means that they have nothing to shoot for. There is no reason to hold out for the right person, or to deny oneself sex until marriage because there is no marriage coming. And so this only encourages more promiscuous behavior and less stability. You can't just say, oh let's have our own marriage even if it's not legal. Societal recognition is important - it provides outside pressure for you to make a marriage work, instead of just running away

from problems. Marriage is a vital, holy sacrament, and to deny it to fellow humans is to deny part of their humanity.

One argument I've heard is that gays and straights all have the same rights. Both a straight person and a gay person can marry someone of the opposite sex, and neither can marry someone of the same sex. I think this argument is stupid - it implies that a gay person should try to marry someone of the opposite sex even if there is no love and attraction there, perhaps for the intentions of raising a traditional family. This demeans the sacrament of marriage even more! Marriage is difficult because it's so hard to find someone whom you will love forever. To find someone like this without any physical attraction? I believe that's impossible. I think a homosexual marrying someone of the opposite sex for the however noble intention of raising a family is as big a sham marriage as someone marrying an old tycoon for their money.

Immigration Reform/DREAM Act

I only became aware of this issue in the spring of my senior year while on the board of the Asian American Student Alliance. Beforehand, I had no idea what the term immigration reform even meant. Then I saw the documentary Papers, about high school students who had been brought to America illegally as a young child or baby, and grown up entirely as Americans. However without documentation, they find themselves in a sticky situation after high school. Applying to college is a huge hurdle with a social-security number usually required on applications. Some schools are understanding now and won't ask if you can't provide one, but you still aren't eligible for any federal student aid. You can't get a passport, can't get a driver's license and are often forced to cheat the system to find legal employment. The trials and tribulations of a super successful illegal immigrant were recently published by Jose Antonio Vargas, the Philippines-born Pultizer prize winner who shocked parts of the world last month. The documentary detailed smart, ambitious and successful high school students who had their American dreams brought to a crashing halt upon graduation in tear-jerking ways. Many face deportation to a country they have never known, without being able to apply for reentry for many years. The DREAM Act offers to give permanent residency (and pave the road to citizenship) to relatively high achieving illegals, high school grads without a criminal record, who were brought here young.

I'm not a policy expert and this isn't a policy proposal. I don't know how to get the DREAM Act to pass and I don't even think it does enough. I just very passionately stand for the principle that we all share this world together and no one should face such a significantly harder path than I faced just because they don't have papers. Like I've said before when talking about Obama's birth certificate, no one can positively know where they're born or have any control over it either. So I really don't see any difference between myself and most people who the DREAM Act would affect, except that I applied to any school I wanted to and have traveled to over 25 countries and never thought twice about it. I know the story of a friend of a friend Juan Gomez, Georgetown MSB '11, whose parents were deported to Colombia when he was in college and he was only barely allowed to stay in school (read here). The problems that he faced dwarf the ones facing his fellow students and friends. And I even know the story of my parents and my auntie's daughter Eva. My parents both came from Hong Kong to study in the United States, and had to stay in school to keep their visa active. They very likely would not have stayed in the US or become citizens had my mom's older sister not married an American, paving the way for my mom to receive a green card. My parents relationship then was rushed into a marriage upon my dad's graduating from design school, else he would have beeb deported to West Africa. Things could very easily have been very different for me. Eva came to the US from Hong Kong at 13 or 14, and excelled in some of the worst public schools in Boston. I don't know if she was a legal immigrant, but when it came time to apply to college, she took the huge risk of going to Canada to legally apply as a foreign student, knowing that if she was denied, she wouldn't be able to return to the US and even finish her senior year of high school. Luckily she got in and eventually graduated from Harvard, but difficulties with getting a green card dogged her for many years and really limited her career.

The opponents of the DREAM Act don't want to give illegal immigrants any incentive to break our laws and abuse our taxpayer services. This is our country and they have their country, and they shouldn't be allowed to just come and mooch of us. What these opponents don't ever seem to think about is that the life of an illegal immigrant is not glamorous. Many get paid under the table and work in terrible conditions with no rights or benefits. They can't complain about being forced to work 16 hours because their bosses would then report them to the authorities. They often don't speak English and spend a lot of their time being scared. And they choose this life. Does that give you any idea of what kind of life they would be living in their native countries? If conditions are so bad and hopeless where you are from that you would risk everything you have to live the average illegal immigrant life, I'm perfectly willing to give you a chance and let you drink from our public water fountains. We're all of the same world here, and the congressmen who are against immigration reform are the ones who don't realize how lucky they are to have been born in one of the world's greatest countries. So our country needs to be less xenophobic and remember that the original illegal immigrants in this continent were Caucasians from England, Spain, France and the Netherlands. I think their descendants should be more sympathetic to their fellow illegal immigrants.

Lastly, just a couple of notes about semantics. I do believe that words have a lot of power and that although the use of a word by society can legitimize it, there are still words that shouldn't be used in a certain context. I have been guilty of saying that something is "retarded" or "gay" meaning stupid, and it has definitely entered mainstream vernacular. It is also wrong. As long as "retarded" refers to the mentally-challenged and "gay" refers to homosexual, we cannot also use it to refer to stupid. I do apologize for using it and I'm really grateful to most gays I know that they usually don't take serious offense to getting slurred, but I'm going to do my best to not use it. On a lighter note, I really don't like the way the words "exotic" and especially "ethnic" are used. You hear terms like exotic clothing and ethnic food thrown around a lot, and I'm like what the hell does that mean. "Exotic" clothing typically refers to something worn by a culture we don't understand. Well to people of that culture, that clothing is simply normal clothing. If people refer to Chinese slippers or robes as exotic in front me, I'm honestly legitimately confused because they're commonplace. If you are white, would it not surprise you to hear khakis and jeans being called exotic? But they certainly can seem that way to certain people. Maybe you can say that something is exotic to you, but let's restrict its usage in public signs to things exotic to all of us, like 3-headed green aliens. Ethnic is even worse. Ethnic food here means food that we don't associate with white people. I've seen it associated with Middle Eastern, South Asian, East Asian, Central American, African and South American cuisines, but never with German, French, Italian or Eastern European cuisines. Well German, French, Italian, those are all ethnicities with very distinctive and well-respected cuisines. Why are those not considered ethnic? Very subtly there is an underlying assumption that white is the standard, and everything else is "ethnic." No. Stop using the word ethnic like that. We live in far too diverse a country to have such a term be so commonly accepted.