Academia

Here's a piece of writing that I had just recently dug up. It's time to rewrite the past.

Super-Girl
In third grade in Japan, my teacher, Mr. Yamaguchi had an orthodox but widely accepted mode of education. He had a strong personality, and his devotion to students was irrefutable. When a student failed to turn in homework, he would take the student into the bathroom and hit his or her behind with a meter stick. Since I absentmindedly forgot my homework most frequently, I could say that I had spent the most time with him in the bathroom. It wasn’t that corporal punishment was particularly hurtful or even shameful, but the act affirmed my identity as a remedial student. A few months before these incidences I lived in Houston, Texas, and I had excelled in my schoolwork. So much so that the teachers wrote ‘Super-girl’ on my report cards. It is amazing how a change in the environment can flip a person’s identity from a super hero to a challenged student.
When my family moved again 4 years later from Japan to a suburb in Maryland, I experienced another transformation. Although I lived in America for the first 8 years of my life I had lost my English tongue. In classes such as math and art, where English is less important, I showed definite merit. I went on to take Advanced Placement classes in high school, and received the highest grade in art and 4’s in calculus and chemistry. Subsequently my college years were filled with passionate art making.
I grappled with socio-political and personal issues through my art. Along with my colleagues I petitioned my University to sustain and strengthen my area of study. We formed our own performance and installation art collective, Optic Tongue. Through Optic Tongue we applied for and received grants with which we organized and created public art. Our impetus for art making was to communicate to a wide range of people about difficult issues such as racism, and sexism. Most of my work involved installation art, which altered the environment and encouraged the viewers to interact.
In one such artwork called ‘the Gift Project’, as part of Optic Tongue, we made four thousand 3” x 3” packages and distributed them all over the campus. The packages contained a personal artifact, a website address to an open forum, and two lines of quotes. The quotes were obtained from personal accounts of prejudice, of someone either being the victim of aggression or the perpetrator. The quotes were altered to erase all specific details of time and place. The subject of the passage was replaced by “I” and “you” to make the passages more immediate to the reader. An example would be: “I was forced to watch my children be taken and gassed while you laughed hysterically,” and “I burned your house because I don’t like your kind.” The packages were meant to generate a more open discussion around difficult topics such as racial violence by personalizing painful interactions to an I/you, or enemy/victim relationship.
One of my most significant enemies was Mr. Yamaguchi. One day, I confessed to him that I hated school, and I hated him with emotional ferocity that left him speechless. He must have been surprised. Next quarter, he resigned from the full-time teaching position, and taught only one class, Chinese Calligraphy. The notoriously mean teacher was turned into a Zen monk who never scolded a single student thereafter. In my mind I was the cause for this, and my heart felt like a fist that could defeat all the evil-doers. That fist and belief in myself as inherently ‘good’ helped me through obstacles.