Education

English

The letters in the picture books come alive and crawl across the page. My eyes try to catch them but they sprout wings and fly into my head and their buzzing drives me crazy. I study English diligently. Because no one talks to me or plays with me at school and a nasty little boy named Jeremy in thick glasses with a potbelly chants Chinese Noodle at me over and over near the tires on the playground. The others join in and I stand there naked with no language. Because I can’t go to the bathroom and my bladder is in constant pain because I don’t know how to ask permission in English and I am too ashamed to tell my parents. So my bladder is heavy for six weeks while I work very hard on Dr. Seuss and smile pretty for the teacher and try to stop the buzzing in my head.

Math

Everyone thinks I'm a nerd because I have black hair and almond-shaped eyes and I never talk. But I’m getting increasingly bad at Math. In eighth grade we move from Baton Rouge to Akron – world capital of polymer. At Litchfield Junior High I enter my first day of Algebra II/Trig. The teacher is a former Marine drill instructor, a bald old man named Mr. Barrett who looks like a cross between Yoda and a fat bullfrog. I scan the room and notice one other Asian kid. He’s shorter than I am, wearing a sky blue sweatshirt, pants cut off at the ankle, and bottle-cap glasses. His hair sticks out in tufts, like duck feathers. “Walter, would you like Jane to sit next to you?” asks Mr. Barrett. Winking at the uncomprehending FOB boy from Hong Kong, math genius extraordinaire, “Walter, do you know about the birds and bees?” The class explodes in laugher. I vow never to speak to Walter Lee. I get worse at math. I hate quadratic equations. My father tries to help me with my homework. In that infuriatingly patient voice he says, “A person of normal intelligence could solve this equation in 5 minutes. It took you 10 minutes. That means you have to work twice as hard.” I start reading Camus.

Art

In sixth grade I find refuge in Greek and Roman mythology. Latin becomes my favorite subject. I write short stories during lunch period about slave girls killing their masters in their sleep. For the National Junior Classical League Convention I make a huge mosaic of one of these slave girls out of aluminum foil, candy wrappers and bits of pink cloth. It’s hideous and wins 3^rd place. I start drawing faces. In tenth grade I take an art class with Ms. Paris-Krummel whose mission in life is to teach us how to draw with the right side of our brains. One day, during the self-portrait unit, she motions to me to come and stand in front of the class. I obey. She clears her throat and asks everyone to look up from their oil pastels. “I want all of you to look at Jane’s face. She has the typical Oriental face. Flat eyelids, small eyes, round cheeks, soft jaw …” The room spins, a kaleidoscope of staring eyes. My body goes numb and my eyes turn fish-gray. It doesn’t bother me, I chant inside. I will forget this. I will forget this. I will forget this. I will forget this.

But I don’t. 

Graduate School

I am 29 and in my second Ph.D. program. I have decided to wreak revenge on those who made me feel small, ugly and unwanted with my ever-increasing stash of cultural capital, official pieces of paper legitimating my cerebral superiority, and a practiced ability to turn a phrase quickly.

But it’s not enough. I need a new language – something that comes out of my own body, this strong, cracked vessel whose surface reads an Etch-a-Sketch map of pain. I’m tired of borrowing inadequate terms from French critical theorists and British cultural workers. Marx and Freud were crabby white grandfathers telling clever stories by the fire.

I want to tell my own stories. In a language that doesn’t contain. That doesn’t sort and compartmentalize and peer into my mouth with clinical fascination. I am tired of being dissected and dissecting myself, of turning myself inside out. I am tired of performing poodle tricks for invisible robots in white lab coats who take methodical notes behind the mirrored window.

A messy language.

To articulate

            through art

the art-ificial real

The art-ificial – imagination.

Becomes real.

If only momentarily,

            through art,

the hovering place,

the art-iculation of language

            – as song –

and myself,

its non-hyphenated, non-modified

Subject

            with a capital S.

What does it mean for a little Korean girl lost in the Bible Belt

            to claim the space of universal voice?

What is the punishment for screaming?

© Jane Park

Published in Experiments in a Jazz Aesthetic: Art, Activism, Academia and The Austin Project, edited by Omi Osun Joni L. Jones, Lisa L. Moore, and Sharon Bridgforth (University of Texas Press, 2010).