Blog 1 | Four Prisons

Angela Tran

ASA 2 - Section 3

30 September 2015

In the article "The 'Four Prisons' and the Movements of Liberation", Iranian philosopher Ali Shariati discusses the four prisons surrounding ourselves and how it correlates to the movements that molded the generation of Asian Americans. These four prisons include the prisons of history and geography, history, society's social class and structure, and the self. I find it interesting that the movements that Asian American's faced in the 1960's were struggles to find liberation from these prisons and to find an identity true to themselves. Despite the great challenges they faced, Asian Americans confronted their struggles, and in result, found liberation through activists, educating students about the Asian American struggle, spreading the public word in organizations, and through the formation of tight communities. Shariati also discusses the importance of Malcolm X, and the ideas of the Civil Rights campaign, spreading through the 1980's, but was it a coincidence that the Asian American movements shared goals with these other political campaigns that were occurring at the same time? And are the past goals of the Asian American movements still present or even relevant today, or have those goals been reached? Have we found liberation from our four prisons since then?