RESISTING THE SILENCE

For my #StorytellingAsResistant project, I am going to be interviewing my mom to talk about Indian education in the 1960s and 1970s. Even though she struggled to gain an education, she managed to get a bachelor’s degree in arts and sciences. My mom has always believed that education is the great equalizer and has always instilled the value of education in me.I will be conducting the interview through Anchor. I really want my mom to show her face so maybe we will use Zoom but she says that she’s too old to show her face (I completely disagree and I will hopefully change her mind). Showing her face will give a face to a voice, however, just audio will also help because she will speak to me in Gujarati from time to time because she is a novice English speaker and will not be able to translate everything into English. The audio will be resistant to the belief that non-Standard English or other languages are inferior to Standard English.

My mom was born into a poor Indian family in India. Throughout my life she has often told me about her struggles to survive and gain an education in India. She told me about how she had to wait in lines for hours to get a signature from a government official to exempt her school fees so she could attend school for free. In India, there were three kinds of schools: elite, expensive private schools that were taught in English, private schools where all subjects were taught in vernacular except for one subject: English, and free, public schools where all classes were taught in vernacular. My mom attended a private school where all classes were taught in Gujarati except for one English-subject class. She would tell me that these government officials would purposely make her wait for hours to degrade her for her low socioeconomic status and they secretly hoped that she would leave.

I was inspired by the article “The English/Urdu Medium Divide in Pakistan: Consequences for Learner Identity and Future Life Chances” by Fauzia Shamim and Uzma Rashid who talk about the perception that proficiency in English will lead to career advancement and how it is used as a way to make novice-English speakers feel shame for not being proficient in English. In the article, Farina, a student who attended a private non-elite Urdu-medium school with one class being taught in English, talks about her relatives who would bully her for novice English-speaking skills: “I didn’t feel good when they [my relatives] were questioning my capabilities. It was like they were questioning my identity [social class]’” (51). My mom also told me about a wealthier cousin who attended a private elite English-speaking school and her cousin and the cousin’s parents would purposely speak to my mom in English in order to humiliate and shame her for being a novice English-speaker. During vacation months, my mom’s family would often go visit the cousin’s house and eventually my mom stopped going. They would often say, “Varsha didn’t come because she feels ashamed at not being able to speak English.” My mom told me that her mother (my grandmother) would stay silent at the insults. When I asked my mom why my Nanee didn’t say anything to defend her, my mom told me that my grandma was a bit coarse to those kinds of insults and it would’ve been impolite to talk back to others. I want to interview her because she has never gotten to speak her story and she deserves to be heard.

Works Cited

Shamim, Fauzia, and Uzma Rashid. “The English/Urdu-Medium Divide in Pakistan: Consequences for Learner Identity and Future Life Chances.” Journal of Education and Educational Development, vol. 6, no. 1, June 2019, pp. 43–61. EBSCOhost, search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&AuthType=cookie,ip,url&db=eric&AN=EJ1216773&site=eds-live.

For this blog post, I decided to watch Lynette Adkins’ YouTube video “Being Black at a PWI.” From just looking at the description of the video, we can tell that Lynette Adkins is a Black student at the University of Texas, a PWI. It seems like she is a student journalist who is interested in examining her school and how students of color are able to participate within the institution and what privileges students of color have and do not have (Adkins has also linked another video: “Is UT Safe? Austin’s Craziest Moments”). When I clicked on Lynette Adkins’ user profile, I was able to see that she has 4.27 thousand subscribers to her channel and the video itself had 6, 297 views, which lets me know that she is an avid blogger.

The purpose of this piece is to examine the feelings, anxieties, and difficulties Black students have while attending UT. The first person she interviews, Terrane, says how everyone talks about Austin being a very liberal and diverse place but it in fact really isn’t and Adkins agrees and responds “It’s not.” Christian, the second person she interviews describes having a cultural shock when first arriving at UT. Christian describes the self-segregation that exists at UT: “Even just like walking down the street, like, you see like, hoards of White people and sometimes they all look at you and see you as different or as a variant of what they know” (1:00). Adkins also looks at the segregation and oppression that exists between the Black community itself. Terrane describes the “intersectionality factor” as “really difficult” because “there are spaces where even in predominantly Black spaces where there is a lot of internalized misogyny and homophobia sometimes I can’t even maneuver in those spaces and then in my white spaces, it’s just so apparent that you are different” (3:45).

The intended audience for the piece are people who already go to UT, specifically Black people and members of the LGBTQ+ community, as well as people who might be thinking about applying to or attending UT. Throughout the video, Adkins interviews several people that are not just members of the Black community but are also members of other communities of color and the LGBTQ+ community. Hypatia, for instance, talks about being biracial, half Black and half Mexican and bisexual and how UT has also made her aware of the “microaggressions” in her life as she has “always existed in gray areas” (4:33). Another student mentions how she “loves how close-knit the Black community is” because this community has allowed her to become in touch with her identity. The student says that she “normally wouldn’t have worn braids” or “big-ass hoops.” Since Adkins doesn’t just show the oppression that exists within UT but also the support that many students have gotten, I think Adkins wants to show the positives and negatives of being Black and attending a PWI.

Considering the medium of a YouTube video, Adkins has the advantage of cutting to different people giving their testimonies whereas if she had put all of this in print, it would’ve been harder to convey the message. The video component allows the audience to actually see the different perspectives and viewpoints of all the people that speak in the video. Since YouTube is a massive visual medium, it is highly accessible whereas print or even online magazines wouldn’t have as much traffic and wouldn’t have garnered the wide audience that YouTube allows. A disadvantage to a YouTube video would be that there isn’t a transcript of the video. Although you can click to view subtitles, you have to pause every few seconds to make sure you get the quote whereas in a print or online medium, the transcript is more accessible because it’s in words and it would be easier to cite the page number.

Citations:

Adkins, Lynette, director. Being Black at a PWI | The University of Texas. YouTube – Being Black at a PWI | The University of Texas, YouTube, 20 Sept. 2018, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Weo3iwoBR_U&feature=emb_logo.

Aja Martinez’s Critical Race Theory Counterstory as Allegory: A Rhetorical
Trope to Raise Awareness About Arizona’s Ban on Ethnic
Studies represents storytelling as an act of resistance by examining assimilation vs. dissimilation and opposition through the fictional story of Rosette Benitez and her work to create and distribute a nanobot that would reverse the aging process and detect all diseases and eliminate them from the human body, inherently leading to immortality. Rosette, after attaining a scholarship to an elite-prep high school, leaves her Mexican family behind in a border town in Arizona and moves into a wealthy White family’s house in northern Arizona to ease the burden of the commute to school. Although at first she feels awkward and strange that a lot of the family customs and traditions are different from the ones in her own family like having three drinks daily instead of just at special occasions, children having cars, and barely communicating with their parents, she even grimaces at the idea of a Mexican housekeeper doing her chores instead of doing them herself like at home, Rosette soon becomes accustomed to these changes and grows apart from her own family. Growing increasingly disdainful of her own Mexican family, she judges her cousins when her mom updates her that one “cousin who was graduating high school and got a job with the police (that’s nice, Rosette thought), or another cousin who was getting married (good for him), one who dropped out (geez), and another who was pregnant (big surprise). Rosette didn’t understand her cousins and their life choices, they had every opportunity I had, she’d think” (3). The inner monologues of Rosette demonstrate the apathy she gains for her Mexican family and culture as she becomes separate from them and starts living a more privileged life as she assimilates into wealthy White family. Rosette, a highly ambitious, hardworking, and dedicated Mexican person who is able to create a life and succeed within the dominant culture as she follows the rules they created, becomes blind to the struggles her family members and others who lead a less privileged life must deal with everyday. Due to her blindness, she is unable to see and understand the circumstances less privileged people are in and how they may lack access, money, and connections to overcome their struggles and create a new, more privileged life.

My mom always says to me, “You always need support in life. You can’t do anything without support.” I, a young, naive girl, blind and deaf to the world and how cruel it really is, often have negated her statement, have said that in this country, you can do anything, you have freedoms, you have rights, but Aja Martinez’s piece invokes the idea of the “mythological American Dream.” Rosette, highly successful, MD/PhD, co-creator of an immortality nanobot that is going to change the world and life as we know it, who is able to sell the rights to the U.S. government, realizes the definition and extents of privilege when she is asked, really ordered, to be the face of the nanobot that will be distributed to Americans based on their written history of success and contribution to the United States of America. Rosette realizes, that “her family and people of her family’s status who have not provided documented evidence of historical contribution may never meet the criteria necessary to qualify for the treatment, and although they likely will not completely die out, they will not have access to the American Dream” (11). Secretary Borne, Breckenridge, and President Dennison, wealthy White people, use Rosette’s Latina identity to justify their claims of supremacy towards other classes and races, and will create a “powerful echelon of the caste” because they have “prolonged access to learning and political positions” as well as “longevity allowing for accumulation of wealth and sources.” All the success Rosette had garnered through assimilation has only been temporary. She doesn’t really have support, she’s not one of them. Martinez again demonstrates how allegory can be an act of resistance because she examines how Rosette’s assimilation lead to arrogance and a false sense of belonging where the mindset creates division between yourself and apathy towards others. Believing herself to be “one of the good ones” from the Latinx community that was able to thrive and succeed within the dominant culture, led her to suppress her identity and turn her back on her own culture. Through Rosette’s realization, Martinez advocates for a togetherness, for communities to stand together and create their own mark within the dominant institution so they can achieve the American Dream.

I was first introduced to Min-zhan Lu’s “From Silence To Words” over the summer as reading material for my independent study on the Perceptions/Pre-Conceived Notions of Standard Academic English on Faculty and Students. I remember being so astonished upon learning that just like how there exists a “Standard English” in the United States, there existed and exists a “Standard Chinese” in China. In my annotated bibliography for the article, I wrote about how Lu wrote that was a member of Bourgeoise and since her father was familiar with British firms, he spoke English. Her father’s fluency in English “opened the door for his success” while her paternal grandfather, who was well versed in classical Chinese, kept losing good paying jobs because he couldn’t speak English” (438).

Now, after the Chinese Revolution in 1949, when China was making the transition from a semi-feudal, semi-capitalist, and semi-colonial country to a socialist country, a Standard Chinese was adopted as the official language of China. Standard Chinese became the language of the dominant group, the Proletarians, and “acquiring the discourse of the dominant group was, to them, a means of seeking alliance with that group and thus surviving the whirlpool of cultural currents around them” (444). Originally, I was only thinking in terms of standardization and the effects of that standardization for people. Lu wrote that Standard Chinese “restrict[ed] my ability to participate in the discussion” (444), and I immediately connected it to the idea that standardization hindered her communication of ideas, beliefs, and connections. But upon rereading the article, I now realize how Standard Chinese and Standard English are sort of reversed. In the United States, Standard English was created by rich caucasian people, particularly men, to silence the voices of others including women and people of color. However, in China, Standard Chinese was created by the middle class and poor because they were the dominant group, and it was a way to help them connect to one another. It’s interesting that Lu wrote that learning and speaking Standard Chinese was a “means of seaking alliance with the dominant group” and a means of “survival” because she was a wealthy person, and standardization usually implies the reverse: a series of rules created by wealthy people.

Either way, I think the key thing to look at here, is the idea of standardization. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, “Standard” is defined as “an authoritative or recognized exemplar of correctness, perfection, or some definite degree of quality”; “a rule, principle, or means of judgement or estimation”; “a criterion, measure”. What started out as a way for people to engage with and connect with one another, became a means of making others uncomfortable and inflicting judgement. Lu writes that in school she learned about how the American and British Imperialists were the “enemies” of China, and one day her aunt was criticized and was almost labeled a “Rightist” because she was caught talking to her husband in English. From then on, Lu had to becareful to only use Standard Chinese publicly and English at home. Speaking English was “Anti-Revolutionary” in China, an act of resistance by Lu’s family. I understand that the country and political climate was different from the United States. But any sort of standardization leaves people out. In the United States, my mom has often been told to “speak English” at work when she is caught speaking in Hindi or Gujarati. I know that people are forced to write and speak a certain way, in Standard English, and if they do not, they are often penalized for it: my mom is discriminated against for speaking a language that’s not English, students in the academy either fail or get low grades on essays and tests because they can’t “write” properly. All of this leads to more violence, and a world that is dominated by a “I’m right and you’re wrong” mentality.

Lu advocates for a trickster method to be adopted into classrooms because when she was a student, she was not given agency and ownership of her thoughts and wasn’t allowed to code mesh because her teachers and parents “contrived to provide a scene free of conflict for practicing my various languages” (445). Instead of pretending that conflict doesn’t exist, we should embrace that conflict so a dialogue can be created to discuss the conflict. Learning other languages provides a worldview approach to education where students and teachers can learn about other people, places, and cultures. The world is transitioning into and forming a virtual consciousness. Businesses are expanding across the globe, people are using social media to connect with others and market themselves, in this age of coronavirus, the world is functioning online. By code meshing, we can learn to respect people from around the world and can help people foster connections as well as become more understanding of the circumstances that people are coming from.

I was a kindergartner racist. I used to really believe that I was superior to my mom, was more “civilized”, because I spoke proper English and she didn’t.

I remember when the monster RACISM, came to life. I was in kindergarten. My mom would always walk me to school and pick me up. The day the monster RACISM came to life, it was pouring. I was about to be late to school and something in my shoes was bothering me. We saw a teacher that I knew who worked with my kindergarten teachers, and she took me to class in the elevator, and thankfully I wasn’t late. However, before we got on the elevator, my mom told my teacher that my shoes were bothering me, and the teacher assured my mom that when we got upstairs to the classroom, she would take a look at my shoes. It turned out, there was a small rock inside, and then I was all better.

However, a half hour later, my mom comes rushing into the classroom with a brand new pair of shoes, shoes that I was forbidden to wear because they were my New York shoes (I lived in New Jersey and we were about to move to New York). My mom was dripping wet and she had run back home, gotten the new shoes, and rushed back to school so her daughter wouldn’t be in pain.

She came in, all the kids were screaming “Hi Nidhi’s mom” the way little kids do, and my mom told me to take off my shoes and wear the new ones in my native language, Gujarati. I was so ashamed, so embarrassed that she had come to my kindergarten class, and worse, she spoke Gujarati.

I said to her, in English, “no, no, go away. Why’d you come here? I’m fine”.

Later that day, my teacher said that she was really disappointed in me for speaking to my mother that way. I came home and told my mom that and apologized. However, I wasn’t really sorry that I had spoken to my mother that way, I was feeling guilty because I had disappointed my teacher.

Now, as a 20 year old, I can say that I am completely mortified over what I had done, the crimes that I had committed that day.

I had judged and hurt my mom for speaking Gujarati and had also rejected my language. And you wanna know the icing on the cake: a year ago, when I was in pre-k, I DID NOT KNOW HOW TO SPEAK ENGLISH. My MOM SPOKE ENGLISH.

I remember the first day of pre-k. It was so strange and I remember my mom telling my teachers that I didn’t know how to speak English. Sure, she had an accent, and couldn’t speak “proper English”, but she spoke English nonetheless and communicated for me when I couldn’t explain what I wanted to say. And now, a year later, I was judging her for speaking accented English.

The Students’ Right to Their Own Language manifesto says, “accepting a new dialect means accepting a new culture” (8). It took me 4-5 months to learn to speak English (I knew how to understand English when I started pre-k and I thank Dora the Explorer, SpongeBob Squarepants, and the rest of the merry Nickelodeon and Noggin gang for helping me do so). However, I didn’t speak English a year ago in pre-k. And a year later in kindergarten, I did.

When I yelled and dismissed my mom, I didn’t realize that I was “rejecting [my] native dialect [and language]” and therefore I was rejecting my culture (8). I don’t know it happened. Or why it happened, since all of my teachers in kindergarten were bilingual and so were many students in the class. I often heard my teachers speaking in Spanish to my classmates so they could better understand an activity or assignment.

All I know is that I’ve been ashamed of my native language and my mom’s accented English many times after the kindergarten incident. About a month or two ago in my Creative Nonfiction class, I had to pick a Creative Nonfiction essay and respond to it. I picked Amy Tan’s Mother Tongue. That was the first time I wrote about this incident and really reflect on it. However, when Elizabeth asked if anyone wanted to read their response out loud, I shied away only because I mentioned the language “Gujarati” in my piece. So, in reflecting on my disrespect for my culture and heritage, and as an apology to my mom: Varsha Gandhi (even the name, my own name Nidhi Gandhi tends to make me cringe, wow I’ve got a lot of issues), I am posting my journal entry/response to Amy Tan’s Mother Tongue below:

“I know this for a fact, because when I was growing up, my mother’s ‘limited’ English limited my perception of her. I was ashamed of her English. I believed that her English reflected the quality of what she has to say. That is, because she expressed them imperfectly her thoughts were imperfect. And I had plenty of empirical evidence to support me: the fact that people in department stores, at banks, and at restaurants did not give her good service, pretended not to understand her, or even acted as if they did not hear her” (Amy Tan, “Mother Tongue”). 

But it was I who did not hear her, who did not hold her hand and encourage her while she struggled to find the words to articulate what she wanted to say. I was ashamed of the way she spoke English: with an Indian accent when I should’ve been proud that she spoke English at all, and more so, spoke more than one language and was at trying even with little education in English. I mean, who was I? A little six year old, balloon-headed fuck who believed I was God’s gift to man because I was smart, intelligent, and spoke perfect English, when in reality, I was speaking broken English just a year ago. I mean, I didn’t even understand English, I could only speak one language, I couldn’t even say one word, so who was I to judge and be embarrassed by her? 

I remember, it was raining and I was late to school. Something was hurting in my shoe, as my mom walked me to school. I came to the class, and a teacher helped me take off the shoe and a little rock, a pebble came out. Not 45 maybe even 30 minutes later, my mom came to class, with brand new shoes that we had bought for the move to New York. She was soaking wet, dripping, but she had hurried home and back to school with the new shoes that I was not allowed to wear because they were for New York, came in rushing because she was crushed with the possibility that I was hurt,  uncomfortable, and could be injured by the pain in my shoe. She came in, speaking her mother tongue, Gujarati, and told me, “Nidhi, baby, I brought you these shoes.” And I was so mean to her. Embarrassed by the way she spoke, another language, I told her in perfect English, “go, go, go, it’s fine just go.” I remember that day my teacher had said that she was disappointed in my behavior toward my mother and that I should apologize to her. 

I went home that day and told my mom what my teacher said but I remember not really understanding how I hurt my mother but rather that I had disappointed my teacher. 

Zitkala-Sa uses her personal narrative to subvert Pratt’s binary of Indian savagery and civilized whiteness. Pratt’s mission “kill the Indian, and Save the Man” enforced the ways in which Zitkala-Sa and other Native American children were stripped of their identities, in both subtle and aggressive ways.

n the chapter “The cutting of my long hair” in The School Days of an Indian Girl, she talks about the subtle but violent assimilation she was subjected to by the administrators at the Carlisle School. Zitkala-Sa says that her spirit “tore itself in struggling for its lost freedom” as she was shoved into an unknown space with unknown rules. When she and the other students were called for breakfast, three bells were tapped: the first bell meant that the students had to draw out their chairs, the second bell meant that students could sit, and the third bell signified that students could start eating. But Zitkala-Sa describes being confused by all the bells and being judged and violated by a woman who stared at her because she didn’t know the routine. Finally, she starts crying because “I was afraid to venture any more” guesswork about the routine. This incident demonstrates the “savagery” of the Native American as they were perceived by the white man as uncivilized and disobedient. Militarizing the children not only crushed their innocent and free spirits full of play and wonderment, but stripped their free-will and changed them (the Native Americans) into civil and obedient zombies. Zitkala-Sa was perceived as a disobedient child who needed to learn etiquette and manners, and when she failed to follow the established routine, she was ostracized by her masters.

I consider this incident as one of the first steps to crushing the innocent and free spirit of the child that was Zitkala-Sa because in the chapter “The Ground Squirrel”, she talks about how she would play with her dolls, just like any other child, while her mother ran errands. Zitkala-Sa describes how she would play with her dolls. “I braided their soft fine silk for hair, and gave them blankets as various as the scraps I found in my mother’s workbag.” She also talks about the delightful wonderment and curiosity she had when a squirrel stole some of the corn she was tasked to watch by her mother. Zitkala-Sa writes, “I wanted very much to catch him, and rub his pretty fur back” and whenever the squirrel came for some corn, Zitkala-Sa would “whoop in recognition” as any child would at the sight of a cute, furry animal. Pratt wrote and said “Kill the Indian, and save the Man” but what about these stories says that Native Americans were inhuman or inhumane?

The Carlisle school further stripped Native Americans of their identity by forcing the children to cut their hair. The length of hair was a big part of Native American culture.
“Our mothers had taught us that only unskilled warriors who were captured had their hair shingled by the enemy. Among our people, short hair was worn by mourners, and shingled hair by cowards!” Zitkala-Sa writes that she and her friend “discussed our fate
and Judéwin said, “We have to submit, because they are strong.”

“No, I will not submit! I will struggle first,” Zitkala-Sa said, and she ran away and hid under a bed. She elaborates, how she was “dragged” by her superiors as she kicked and screamed in an attempt to rebel and fight against her oppressors who wanted to rip her culture and heritage away from her.

Zitkala-Sa subverts Pratt’s mission as she used the language of her oppressors to write about the oppression she faced. Whereas, Pratt uses the term “Indian” and describes them as “savage”, Zitkala-Sa gives names, gives backstories, and describes the times when she and other Native Americans were forced to accept defeat and surrender to their oppressors. When she writes “discussed our fate” it reinforces how there was a higher power who forced them to “submit” because they were stronger. The militarization of Native Peoples to force obedience and submissiveness, and the loss of Native languages is subverted by Zitkala-Sa as she writes about the prejudice and injustice that was done to her and countless other people. Through obedience by the adoption of the dominant culture, Zitkala-Sa disobeys that culture as she takes reclaims her identity and unveils the tyranny she was subjected to.

Paulo Freire in his book Pedagogy of the Oppressed writes that people who are oppressed must enter into a “communion” with the people, that is, that they must find a way to “‘discover” their oppressor and in turn their own consciousness” (61). Freire is trying to say that oppressed people have to separate their oppressors from their other self–their identity outside of their oppression characteristics, because if they cannot, then their situation (being oppressed) and mentality toward their situation and their oppressors will always remain pessimistic and fatal. Freire writes that there is an “existential duality” in the oppressed person’s mind, where they have internalized the image of their oppressor, and therefore the oppressed person has become their own oppressor.

I agree with Freire that oppressed people have an “existential duality” where they are not just being abused by their oppressors but are also enslaved by their own minds. When I was in middle school, I was teased and bullied by other kids in my class and school. I was never picked in gym class and when I was last and the teacher gave me a team to be on, people would make comments such as “ughh, noooooo, why is she on this team?”. Although that was painful to hear and being in gym class was agonizing, those words and the images of those kids stayed in my mind and haunted me even when I wasn’t in gym class or school. I would repeat those comments in my head every day and night. I would get so tense the day before I had to go to gym class (we had gym twice a week) and a lot of the time, it was hard to play well because I was made to believe and I did believe that I wasn’t tough, or strong, or couldn’t play well. I could never defend myself to others and every time we would start another sport and we had to pick teams, I wanted to throw up because I knew that I wasn’t going to get picked again.

However, I think Freire places too much pressure on the oppressed person to separate the oppressor from their identities outside of that situation and also for the oppressed person to teach their oppressor. It can take years, sometimes even a lifetime, for an oppressed person to recover from their trauma and to think about their oppressors and the reasons why they behaved the way they did.

Freire also puts emphasis on the oppressed to teach their oppressors. However, when a more privileged person is in a space with a less privileged person, the privileged person has to first be able to identify that they are privileged and then they have to want to learn.