becoming a real student

Long time no talk, my friends,

It’s another rainy day in Singapore. Really, since last week or a couple weeks ago, it’s been raining at least once a day. It makes the climate a little more unbearable due to its humidity that’s 10 times worse than anywhere else (even that of Durham or Korea in mid-july to mid-august). I don’t mind it at all, except in the morning that I have to climb up the hill once I get off the bus to come to school ☺.

Anyhow, I haven’t had time this past 2 weeks to write, although I have had so many urges to write. And now, I’m writing, because honestly, I can’t concentrate on my studying anymore. Throughout the whole weekend, I can’t say I studied the whole time, but I did more studying than usual, and now I’m just tired of staring at the textbook that has so many graphs and numbers that I don’t understand much. But this doesn’t mean that I have nothing to say. You know what a chatterbox I can be, so no worries.

So recently, I’ve been thinking a lot about being a woman, especially an Asian woman, in the context of diverse environment. I have been lucky enough to be exposed to diverse environment since I was young, and I have thoroughly enjoyed the privilege. But what I also learned, in many painful ways, was that I have to speak up (literally and figuratively) to get my voice heard, even in this country where Asians (East Asians especially since 70% or so of the population is Chinese descendents) are majority while the culture has a fair mix of Western influence. The same may apply to South East Asian women. In one of my classes (on leadership), my prof mentioned that first-born Indian males are more likely to dominate the conversation while SE Asian women are more likely to be someone who doesn’t get opportunities to speak. Same applies to tall, white (usually handsome) males who are fluent in English (or not, in my opinion), again according to him. Another thing: inspirational leaders, like Barack Obama or MLK Jr., are most likely to be men (I mean how many females can you think of at this moment?) with deep low voices.

All these things reminded me of my voice class at Duke. How random, but I promise it will all come together. I was in Dr. Linnartz’s class, an amazing classical voice teacher. She pointed out the fact that my talking voice is “too low” compared to my singing voice (which is mezzo-soprano-ish). She wanted me to use my throat less, because I was constantly hurting my vocal cord by speaking the way I do always. I tried a little, but I felt ridiculous. I mean, I thought my voice was already high and distinct enough, normally, and now, I have to speak differently?!? I talked to my mom that night, and she also pointed out that after I started to speak English more fluently than Korean, my voice got significantly lower than before. So I never ended up even trying to “change” my talking voice, but that really got me to think a lot of things that I experienced while I was learning English over past 8 years. I have been usually pretty good with foreign languages, and one of the reasons was because I’m good at imitating different sounds, according to one of my teachers. The way I speak English now is after a constant imitation of American people that I’ve encountered, especially the ones who speak “good” American English. The way they spoke (therefore I imitated) has always been a lower-key, basically more “masculine” voices which were (unconsciously) taught to me as intellectual, sophisticated and persuasive voices. I basically learned how to speak like a handsome White male, in sum.

It may sound a little ridiculous to you, but I actually think my whole logic makes a perfect sense. I’m not saying that I don’t like the way I talk, but I find it simply fascinating to find out linguistic development to embrace the subtle cultural pressure that I had never thought of. I used to pronounce the same word hundreds of times before I went to bed if I was made fun of that day due to a certain “wrong” pronunciation. I used to hate the fact that I’m not a native speaker of English, especially when I was frustrated with writing. I hated the fact that some random white dude in class interrupted me in the middle of my talk, just because I was going a little slow. So what I learned was how to fight back. I wanted to have the same style of weapon as they do: precise American accent with lower voice that really resonates throughout the classroom, not to mention the deliberate speed which gives the other side a hard time to process what you’re talking about while not giving them opportunities to interrupt you. I wanted to become a better talker than a better listener, while constantly thinking what I can talk about right after this person who’s talking right now (without really listening to her/him). I was embodying the American White Male characters academically, whether I liked it or not.

Friends, this is not an attack on any specific person or people, but I’m a little frustrated about this aspect, because I find a lot of Westerners (both females and males) and myself, who are educated in the West with different styles from the East, making this mistake all the time, without meaning to hurt other people’s self-esteem or to kill others’ opportunities in the class. All my colleagues here are brilliant people, although some of their English is not as “good” as some of the natives or people like me. But when I see people being impatient while they really just have to listen, I get frustrated, because I feel like I am going back to several years ago and looking at myself who was being attacked and interrupted so many times, just because I wasn’t quite American/Western or even, masculine (not “manly” per se but culturally speaking). Theory of oppression in real life, right here.

So what do I do now? I actually try to speak less (although I do talk a lot in classes), and listen more. I sit back just a little, and pay attention to every word that my friend who’s not so fluent in English has to say. Learning to not to talk is by far the hardest thing that I’m working on (OK, maybe microeconomics is about there). Silence is NOT a virtue (because it is indifference and powerlessness), but listening definitely is. And I do believe that, one day, people with voices like me, can speak up freely, inspiring others, just like MLK and Barack.

Just as always, I miss you all my beloved. Peace.