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Civic Imagination

Yeti: The Abominable Snowman Lives On

Yeti is a powerful myth, which originated in the Himalayas. The yeti, also known as the abominable snowman, is believed to be a large, hairy, apelike creature that wanders the mountains. He visits villages in the night and is rumored to steal animals and small children for food. Though this existence has never been confirmed, reported sightings through out the years, have kept the Yeti narrative alive. Mountaineers reported seeing a hairy figure in high altitudes. Villagers report seeing footprints in the snow. Trekkers holidaying in the Himalayas report Yetis strolling through their camp grounds. Here is a description from a write up on Blum House:

"At the top of the world, in the frozen wasteland of the Himalaya Mountains, lurks a terrifying, towering, man-monster known as the Abominable Snowman! Locals still speak in hushed whispers of the creature they call The Yeti and their terrifying encounters with a giant man-like creature that would appear without warning – only to vanish in a swirling maelstrom of wind, ice and snow. And the villagers are not the only ones said to have witnessed the elusive frost giants that roam the perilous mountain range between Nepal and Tibet. According to lore, the monstrous Yeti, a towering fur covered creature may be some sort of “missing link” – some THING in the evolutionary scale between ape, man and demi-god – a force of unparalleled nature NOT to be reckoned with. And unlike its cryptid cousins, Sasquatch and Bigfoot, the Yeti’s secret origins may be discerned in ancient pre-Buddhist religious rites. In the glowing embers of warming fires, the mountain villagers once worshipped the Yeti as a supernatural entity – a god of the hunt. Depicted in totems festooned everywhere in villages, temples and shrines, the Yeti appears as a menacing ape-human hybrid. Illustrations portray the snow colossus brandishing a great stone weapon to slay both beast and man alike."

http://www.blumhouse.com/2015/12/24/the-abominable-snowman-the-wild-history-and-legend-behind-the-yeti/

I grew up believing the story. I first encountered it when I was a small girl growing up in Nepal. My strongest encounter with the story came when I was trekking with my classmates. My friend and I woke up in the middle of the night and became aware of a creature walking around the campground. We both peaked out after seeing a shadow pass over our tent wall. We quietly unzipped our tent zipper to take a peak. To this day, we both swear that we saw a big hairy foot just outside our door before we both took a very speedy nose dive into our sleeping bags.We told everyone about our sighting in the morning, everyone laughed us off, but we know what we say. Yes, the Yeti story is very well known, and is one of the iconic tales in Nepal. This story resonates with me because it is so set in the mountainous region of Nepal. It reminds me of home. There is also a sense that the Yeti in some way protects Nepal.

I think this story could inspire people in Nepal around their cultural identity without falling into the religious and sectarian pitfalls that plague current discussions around what it means to be Nepalese. The Yeti is connected to nature, climate change, and to the ways in which Nepal's people co-exist with their environment. It is a story that is accessible to everyone. I could imagine a series of new stories inspired by the Yeti taking action on behalf or in partnership with Nepal and its people. He is our special Nepali super-creature. He has been used so much in stories outside Nepal - I think it time for Nepal to reclaim him as their own.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LZnAo_2cpYY
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mlKnq-3ICYs
http://www.themeparkinsider.com/flume/201505/4570/

superhero, Nepal, Yeti, snowman

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6. Maus: A Survivor's Tale
12. The Lion King
13. Sailor Moon Sailor Moon is a young teenage girl that learns that she has magical powers that allows her to fight against the evils of the extraterrestrial world. She finds the Sailor Scouts, Venus, Mercury, Mars, and Jupiter. Each of them have powers that relate to the symbolism of their planet and a specific superhero outfit that they wear. Based in Neo-futuristic Tokyo the story was released in the 1990’s as a manga and then a television anime came out. It became very popular among teens especially young Asian-American girls because of where it was based although the characters were many depicted as white skin tone.
16. Chef "Chef is a film released in 2014 that was written and directed by Jon Favreau who was inspired by his own career in film and love of the culinary arts to create a movie about a popular chef who needs to find his creative spark and fall in love with cooking once more. The film begins in California where Chef Carl Casper lives and works. After receiving a brutally negative review from a well regarded food critic, Carl reevaluates his job at a fancy restaurant in California. He realized that sticking to a strict menu has taken away a lot of joy from the profession he used to love. After he quits his job, Carl heads to Miami, Florida with his family because his ex-wife, Inez, needs him to watch their son, Percy, while she works.
17. How the tortoise got cracks in his shell
21. The colonial city
22. My Dad
27. Sanjay's Super Team This is an animated short film from Pixar directed and written by Sanjay Patel who based it off his experiences as a child. The story revolves around a young boy, Sanjay, and his father, an Indian-American migrant. Sanjay is watching his favourite superheroes on TV while his father is praying by the shrine in the same room. His father urges him to join in the ritual but Sanjay refuses so he switches off the TV and takes his toy in order to force him into it.
31. Freedom Writers: Bridging Racial Divides Through Writing Freedom Writers (the movie) is based on a true story of a school in Long Beach, California. The main character, Erin Gruwell, is a new teacher at Woodrow Wilson Classical High School and placed with the students who are considered at-risk and unteachable. These students were almost entirely comprised of minorities, with the exception of one student. With such a diverse class and a group of students who had no apparent desire to learn, the film explores the real-world challenges that Gruwell faced trying to get her students to come to class wanting to learn, if they would even want to come to their classes at all. The class divides itself based on race, and fights and arguments breakout regularly. The class later finds common ground on their feelings and discussions around The Holocaust. Her students become inspired to break free from the things that originally divided them, most notably with one character speaking out against someone who she was being forced to lie for during a trial. She tasked her students with writing in a diary and then compiled those journals and writings into a collection of them all in “The Freedom Writers Diary.”
33. Emmeline the Suffragist
35. Michelle S
41. Rafael DCB
45. A Leader
48. The Myth of the Mansfield Hanging Tree
57. Fox's Creek On a hot summer night a community of animals were chased out of their home by a growing wildfire which started to burn down their forest. Mother Deer grabbed her young ones while the other animals rushed to cross the great river. Everyone showed their human instincts, pushing, kicking, and growling desperately on their way to safety. Mother Deer made it to the other side with Fawn but Mother Rabbit forgot one of her many young ones so she asked her for he
58. Train of Hope
61. Simba and the Maasai Warriors
64. Roaring Lion
65. Nour H
72. Nora S
73. Out of Balance
78. The doctors' team of the Aegean sea
81. Ghada G.
87. Stephanie Q
91. Equilibrium Equilibrium is set in 2072 in Libria, a city state established by the survivors of World War III. “Equilibrium” is an action/thriller movie following John Preston (Bale), an enforcement officer in a futuristic world where a regime has decided to eliminate war by suppressing emotions using a certain type of drug. Books, art and music are strictly forbidden and "feeling" is a crime punishable by death.
93. Nina N.
94. Sandokan: A Post-Colonial Coldwar Hero The plot of the novel revolves around the adventures of Sandokan - a Bornean man who lost his status, home and family to British colonialists. Embittered by his experience, Sandokan sets up camp at the island of Mompracem. From there he leads a gang of pirates under the flag of the Tiger. Together they destabilize the colonialists’ authority through robbery and violence. Steeped in the colonial period in which it was written, Salgari’s novel pitted indigenous populations against the colonial powers in ways that highlighted the evils of imperialism and celebrated resistance. As Maria Bianca Gerlich (1998, 34) observes, “Sandokan, Mompracem, and the flag of the tiger are allegories in the fight for freedom.”
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111. Dana G.
117. How I "Eat, Pray, and Love"
122. We are all Martín Fierro
124. Nick C
128. Tiajna A
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134. Julia B. I am a third year student at the University of Maryland in the U.S. studying Journalism with a minor in French. Writing is a passion of mine, and journalism is one of the many real world applications of writing. I hope to be able to use writing to make an impact on the world through the news and help others get the information that they need in order to be informed citizens. In my free time I like to do triathlons and write poetry.
135. An American Chef in the Aegean: Teaching solidarity through food
137. A Tale of Traveler's Past A 28-30 year-old man boards a train and sits in an empty compartment. He is a weary traveller who has spent countless days trying to find transportation to reach his destination. While en route, he falls asleep and is visited from travelers from past and present journeys of who had boarded this particular train. The first visitor is Alexander Hamilton; a migrant from the Caribbean who traveled to the United States in the 1800's. He recounts his experience of traveling to a new country and achieving his dream of creating something that would outlive him. The second visitors are Art and Vladek Spiegelman; a father and son who share their story of how they migrated to a new country after the Holocaust events of World War II and their struggles of adapting into the culture of a new nation. The last visitor is a woman who comes from the Middle East who arrived in Vienna a year ago. She tells her story about the journey she experienced to reach her new home as well as the issues she's experiences now as an outcast from a land that she's still not fully settled into yet.
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Contents of this tag:
Contents of this tag:
2. Sandokan: A Post-Colonial Coldwar Hero The plot of the novel revolves around the adventures of Sandokan - a Bornean man who lost his status, home and family to British colonialists. Embittered by his experience, Sandokan sets up camp at the island of Mompracem. From there he leads a gang of pirates under the flag of the Tiger. Together they destabilize the colonialists’ authority through robbery and violence. Steeped in the colonial period in which it was written, Salgari’s novel pitted indigenous populations against the colonial powers in ways that highlighted the evils of imperialism and celebrated resistance. As Maria Bianca Gerlich (1998, 34) observes, “Sandokan, Mompracem, and the flag of the tiger are allegories in the fight for freedom.”