Speaker’s Block
by William Landers, ETA ’20 There is one question that everyone asks me, if not with their lips, then with their eyes: “You’re Korean. Why don’t you speak it?” I’ve known how to say hello and thank you in Korean for as long as I can remember, but that barely counts. Many of my peers quickly gain confidence in their Korean, at least enough to survive. Yet I often feel lost in the noise. Back home, the force that Toni Morrison called “the white gaze” obfuscated me as a foreigner, an infiltrator. That gaze, the way that white identity depends on othering to survive, drowned my own voice beneath a wail. It screeched that I don’t belong. Just ask the classmate who was curious if I could translate Gangnam Style, the teacher who asked me what country my parents were from or the university orientation staff who offered to guide me to the check-in desk for Chinese foreign students. It matters not to the white gaze that I took only French and Spanish classes in school. It matters not that my parents are whiter than Swiss cheese. It matters not that I am a native English speaker and could navigate to the correct check-in desk unattended. It matters only that I look like a foreigner in a white space. I used to think that I could blend in by silencing my Korean half, softening the hard stares by appeasing them. But my labored performance played to a deaf audience. If history does not repeat, then it certainly rhymes. I expected a new status quo in South Korea, but life here often rhymes with my past. While the white gaze casts me as a foreigner back home, I am seen as a native here. While many Americans view me with suspicion, most Koreans simply don’t regard me with interest. I am invisible. At least, until I am spoken to. The interaction often follows a predictable beat: a question posed in Korean, a louder second attempt and a disbelieving third crash through the air. Sometimes, it sounds like apologetic confusion. Other times, the intonation reveals frustration or dismissal . But it always grates against my ears. The crescendo peaks as each waiter, shop owner or random pedestrian’s eyes ignite with expectation and then darken with disappointment. My face speaks first, but it lies. I blend in as long as no one talks to me, but I can always hear the strange music produced between those predictable beats and rhymes. Languages can bridge cultures. I want that bridge between my American and Korean halves. Yet, my history’s rhymes give me pause. I hear them in each confused and frustrated Korean voice. I hear them in each frivolous complaint lodged by an offended white foreigner, as if being stared at were the highest form of discrimination. I hear them in the confident intonation of my peers, who employ their growing lexicons with light joy instead of heavy baggage. I hear these rhymes blend in a melody, together saying I belong neither here nor there. That I will never be good enough, so I shouldn’t bother. Maybe I need some earplugs. Maybe then, I could learn decent Korean. Maybe then, I could build some bridge to my alienated heritage. It’s too bad the melody is in my mind, and the ringing in my ears would only get louder. [Featured Photo by Julia Wargo]
Conferences & In-Between
by Carolyn Acosta Sanchez, ETA ’20 Spring Conference When they opened my fridge and saw the stacked boxes, each filled with different foods at various stages of decay, it was as if my world had stopped. One held the remains of a pasta bowl, the creamy sauce turned thick and rancid with spots of white circling its surface. Another held proof that yes, indeed, McDonald’s is real meat because if not the nuggets wouldn’t have turned a sickly green. There was one at the bottom of the fridge, a pesto pasta only half-eaten. I had made it myself but it had given me a stomachache. Others, just like them, filled the fridge at every corner. Confronted with the evidence of my depression I turned to my friends, although really maybe they were acquaintances. I mean, how long had I even known them? A month or two max. Certainly, they didn’t know me well enough to know that I was a good liar. An expert at acting just fine. “Look at you guys Marie Kondo-ing my life,” I laughed as they helped me sort through the remains of my shame and pool them all in the food waste bin outside of my apartment. It was Spring Conference and we didn’t have time to finish making dinner, let alone psychoanalyze every way I was falling apart. We had arrived at our teaching placements in mid-February, around two months prior. Now in May, the Spring Conference has arrived. The conference – the first of two – was intended to be a sort of check-in to see how we were all doing so far. Typically, it was held in-person in culturally significant places around Korea, like Jeju Island or Gyeongju. However, like everything else for our cohort, it was ruined by the ever-present COVID-19. So instead, we were expected to learn more about the art of teaching and Korean culture through various Zoom presentations… exciting. In an effort to fight the boredom we knew would ensue, all of the English Teaching Assistants that lived in the Jeollabuk Province decided to meet at my apartment. The night progressed through cups of mojitos, a vodka soda and the droning voices of the various presenters. Once the last presenter had finished their spiel, I closed my eyes and then opened them early Saturday morning to the sound of shuffling and whispered voices. Slowly they all filed out of my apartment to their own respective homes, temporary as they may be. Day two of the Spring Conference saw me sitting alone in my creaking apartment. It was in between the quiet humming noise of that damned fridge and the monotonous presenters that I came to a resolution. I would never let that happen again. No more delivery and takeout food every night. I was going to cook for the rest of my year in Korea. Empowered by my promise, I ran out of my room during the hour-long lunch break to gather the ingredients needed for the Fulbright-sponsored online cooking class I would take after the break. This was supposed to replace the real-life activities we would have done in Jeju Island or Gyeongju. I had mistakenly chosen to learn how to make mandu and japchae and I hadn’t had time to get the ingredients. I set a 40-minute timer on my phone and made my way to Homeplus. It was only a two-minute walk and I was confident I would make it back in time for the class. Entering the supermarket, I pulled out the list of ingredients. The recipe was in English and therefore this should have been relatively simple. I grabbed a basket and headed to scour the aisles. The first problem arose when I couldn’t find the glass noodles. Obviously, they had them at the store but everywhere I looked left me disappointed. I moved on to the next ingredient, corn starch for the mandu. My brain buzzed as I tried and failed to find it. Frustrated, I opened my savior Papago, the best translation application, and watched it work its magic. Slowly, the words turned from English to Korean as I tried to match the words to the products in front of me. Yet, as I stared at the wall of noodles, all different shapes and sizes, labeled various things in Korean, I felt my chest start to pound. Each new ingredient clawed at my heart and constricted its movements until tears started welling in my eyes. Suddenly, I remembered my mom– a Dominican immigrant in New York City asking her daughter to find the ingredients to her recipe. The recipe was in Spanish but she was surrounded by walls of English products. With every question she asked, her daughter grew more frustrated. Not a day went by that she didn’t ask her children to translate something to Spanish. Every eye roll and sigh that her children gave her brought tears to her eyes. Why couldn’t she just learn English? And here I was, in Korea, ever the foreigner and ever regretful. I was my mom. I looked down and my alarm rang. Time to go home. Sulking in the failure of my journey, I sat in my room and watched as the other ETAs prepared the meal through Zoom. Obviously, they had succeeded in finding the ingredients, so why hadn’t I? They smiled at their computers holding up their finished works and I smiled back. I smiled until the clock hit six pm. The conference was over and my computer screen was dark once again. The fridge started its humming once again. My smile slipped off my face as I took in my solitude once again. At the end of the day, I was alone in my one-room apartment. No number of conferences and fake smiles were going to change that fact. I got up from my desk, threw myself under my comforter, turned off the lights and closed my eyes. The In-between A week after the conference, there were maggots in
thoughts on Naju: 11:46pm
by Claire Ehr, ETA ’20 4th September, 2021. Kpop, jjajangmyeon and jampong smells and photobooth pictures adorn the small apartment in Naju. We sing along to the parts we know, hum along to others, harmonize occasionally and interject every now and again with tangents of thoughts from our day. On the side of the fridge, I find a moment of chaos and a moment of calm. A circus of words, cartwheeling over each other, tumble for my attention. As I focus, the Kpop fades, smells dissipate and room decorations become irrelevant. I spend the next 20 minutes playing with the words, meaning metal detector and museum curator rolled into one. And out comes this poem. It’s reaching at something, some expression of our experience in Korea, of working for the government and of being “in-between”. But it’s also inherently pretty silly. 20 minutes at 11:46 will not produce the world’s next great poem. But poetry doesn’t have to be a competition; art doesn’t have to be “the best” to mean something to those who experience it. It can just be a moment by a fridge in a satellite city, surrounded by music, food and friends. With that said, I’ve left the other unused words to the side, and invite you to join in with this play: see what you come up with! If the whim beckons, take a moment to engage in poetry and expression; it doesn’t need to be too grand or cerebral. But if you end up writing the world’s next great poem from a set on a fridge, please let me know! I’d love to see what you create and share this kind of creative process with you.