Becoming Through Words
Whenever someone asked what my major was, I suddenly thought I could predict the future. I would brace myself to hear the response: “English majors are a stupid, useless degree that makes no money.” But no one has ever said that to me. Instead, I'm responded to with a polite head nod and a little “oh,” followed by the assumption, “So, you want to be a teacher, right?”
Months ago, I was so proud and relieved to tell people that my career goal was to become a doctor—that I had no goal with my English degree. I am not useless! is what I was trying to prove. Then I was struck with another blow to my face with the other question: “Then what are you even doing being an English major?”
Even though I knew I enjoyed the humanities because I liked reading and writing, I still didn’t know exactly what I wanted to do with them. Everyone reads and writes—so why pursue a degree in it? And why eventually abandon my goal of being a doctor for this? I didn’t have an answer until just last semester of my senior year.
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My backpack slumped against the bottom of the tiny desk I sat in. It was the first day of classes for the fall semester, and I was a senior finally sitting in my junior English writing class that I had put off. It was English 300: Race & Rhetoric with Professor Haivan Hoang. More students trickled into the cubicle classroom until it was the professor, flickering on all the lights in the room. I had no idea what to expect from this class, besides that it’d revolve around the concepts of, well, race and rhetoric. I must admit that hearing those two words paired together sounded like a bore but also quite intimidating. It also sounded like a class that would be a lot of work—and it sure was, but in the best way possible.
We did not hesitate to dive straight into learning, with the first question being thrown at us: “What is critical race theory?” Never in my middle or high school, or in any previous years of education before this class, did I ever hear the concept of critical race theory (CRT). However, a few hands from class held high with definitions that echoed off each other: a framework used to examine the relationship between race, law, and power. Suddenly, I felt this was a concept I should’ve known my whole life. In ways, it was something I should’ve known, but also, it was something I couldn’t have expected myself to know from my predominantly white, small town in Massachusetts.
Following that introductory question, another was thrown at us: “How does the idea of whiteness as constructed in our society affect the way we read and write?” This was the start of unit one in our journey to dismantle the idea of race and power through the lens of CRT. We dove deep into studying the case of Hawai’i’s history of English standard schools in the early 1900s to articulate answers to this question. We read Young Morris’s article, “Standard English and Student Bodies: Institutionalizing Race and Literacy in Hawai’i,” which included a quote from a survey of education in Hawai’i from 1920:
“Furthermore, many of those [students] who do come with some knowledge of English better not have any at all, for it is the jargon of the plantations and the ‘Pidgin English’ of the streets, which must, in the end, be eliminated.”
After first reading that quote, I felt conflicted within myself. I felt sympathy for these students, whose dialect of English was devalued, but I also struggled with the troubling question of whether enforcing English on everyone was truly helpful or potentially harmful. Through our assigned readings and stories we read in class, I was able to transform the thinking I had grown up with—that reading and writing in a particular way in English was the only way it should be—into seeing how wrong it is. It was a moment where I finally saw how impactful literature and writing are.
Learning and unlearning the concepts of race, power, and rhetoric were all confusing, and even now I can still admit it’s confusing, but I at least have an understanding of not only our social power dynamics but myself too. I struggled to write our first essay, which bounced off this topic. Of course, I now know a thing or two about it after spending the semester revisiting this essay. All the way up until my third rewrite of the essay—after dissecting and chewing up my own writing to reconstruct it all—it felt like I only knew just enough to get the big picture. I couldn’t quite pin it down. To be pushed to analyze deeper than just being able to nod my head and instead explain it was a learning curve. Learning as I was writing about the complex topic surely unlocked a new feeling of insecurity that had me believing I was weak and unintelligent. After submitting my first essay, I emailed the professor expressing how stupid I felt.
But there was a true moment of empowerment with my third essay, which was an autobiography revolving around my own personal experience regarding my race. I titled my piece “Between My Mother’s World and Mine.” It was composed of personal vignettes, incorporating secondary sources, that explored generational differences in perceptions of the Asian race between my mother and me. This writing took heavy inspiration from Cathy Park Hong’s book Minor Feelings: An Asian American Reckoning that we read in class. Hong’s writing was witty, humorous, yet personal and informative all at once. I loved how she used her own personal experience to shed light on other minority groups to educate and advocate. I wanted to do the very same.
For the week and a half that was given to us to write this essay, I wrote every morning at 8:30 a.m. on the fourth floor of South College by the window where the sun shined through, pretending to be a writer like Hong. This essay was the first time I felt my writing had weight to it, meaning I was writing something not only for myself but potentially for others in a way that unites. Additionally, it was the first time I acknowledged the deep dynamic between my mother and me due to our shared race. While we are both Asian, we hold different views of it, so it felt liberating to write about it finally.
To be a twenty-one-year-old who isn’t an angsty teen against her parents brings me to a weird position I find myself in—now understanding my mother while also having the education she could never receive. Writing this essay was not just about understanding myself—it was also about understanding the legacy my mother carries and how it has shaped me. It made me reflect on the ways her experiences and beliefs have quietly influenced my own life, especially in the moments we share at home.
“Sometimes, when she is cooking, I believe I can smell the held beliefs that she has tried to pass down to me, as much a part of her legacy as her love. It stirs something complicated in me—a desire to embrace her history, to hold it close as a reminder of where her hurt comes from, while also wanting to extinguish the spread of her inheritance. I am not a mother, but I often wonder how I would keep parts of her inheritance with me and how I would leave the other parts distant from my own children.”
Throughout my time as an English major, I’ve realized that the articulation of our thoughts into words holds incredible weight and is crucial no matter where you go––they have the power to clarify, to persuade, and even to protect. This realization was key to me leaving behind the goal of becoming a doctor. While I initially thought that walking away from medicine meant I had to let go of my appreciation for science altogether, my English 300 class showed me otherwise. English has given me the leverage to still pursue a field connected to the medical field, just in a different way, where my words can be more meaningful than in ten, twenty-minute appointments with patients, like perhaps law.
Now, when someone asks me what my major is, I don’t brace myself anymore. I don’t feel the need to prove anything. I’m no longer searching for a justification because I finally understand the value of my degree. Words have power, and my ability to employ them with purpose and precision is a strength—one that makes me proud to say I’m an English major.
