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    Cassandra Hsiao Admissions Essay

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    Sofia Escovia
    The document discusses the author's experience growing up in a home where English was spoken with non-standard pronunciations due to her mother being from Malaysia. As a child, the author struggled with pronunciations in school and faced ridicule from classmates for differences in how words were said. However, at home the author and her mother understood each other perfectly. The author's mother had to learn English as a second language in Malaysia and faced humiliation from her teacher. As an adult, the author works to stand up against ignorance through writing and performing poetry while also helping her mother improve her English pronunciation to avoid ridicule from others. In the end, the author expresses that while their English may be non-standard, it is a

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    Cassandra Hsiao Admissions Essay

    Uploaded by

    Sofia Escovia
    344 views2 pages
    The document discusses the author's experience growing up in a home where English was spoken with non-standard pronunciations due to her mother being from Malaysia. As a child, the author struggled with pronunciations in school and faced ridicule from classmates for differences in how words were said. However, at home the author and her mother understood each other perfectly. The author's mother had to learn English as a second language in Malaysia and faced humiliation from her teacher. As an adult, the author works to stand up against ignorance through writing and performing poetry while also helping her mother improve her English pronunciation to avoid ridicule from others. In the end, the author expresses that while their English may be non-standard, it is a

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    The document discusses the author's experience growing up in a home where English was spoken with non-standard pronunciations due to her mother being from Malaysia. As a child, the author struggled with pronunciations in school and faced ridicule from classmates for differences in how words were said. However, at home the author and her mother understood each other perfectly. The author's mother had to learn English as a second language in Malaysia and faced humiliation from her teacher. As an adult, the author works to stand up against ignorance through writing and performing poetry while also helping her mother improve her English pronunciation to avoid ridicule from others. In the end, the author expresses that while their English may be non-standard, it is a

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as docx, pdf, or txt
    344 views2 pages

    Cassandra Hsiao Admissions Essay

    Uploaded by

    Sofia Escovia
    The document discusses the author's experience growing up in a home where English was spoken with non-standard pronunciations due to her mother being from Malaysia. As a child, the author struggled with pronunciations in school and faced ridicule from classmates for differences in how words were said. However, at home the author and her mother understood each other perfectly. The author's mother had to learn English as a second language in Malaysia and faced humiliation from her teacher. As an adult, the author works to stand up against ignorance through writing and performing poetry while also helping her mother improve her English pronunciation to avoid ridicule from others. In the end, the author expresses that while their English may be non-standard, it is a

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    © All Rights Reserved
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    In our house, English is not English.

    Not in the phonetic sense, like short a is for apple, but rather in the
    pronunciation – in our house, snake is snack. Words do not roll off our tongues correctly – yet I, who
    was pulled out of class to meet with language specialists, and my mother from Malaysia, who
    pronounces film as flim, understand each other perfectly.

    In our house, there is no difference between cast and cash, which was why at a church retreat, people
    made fun of me for “cashing out demons.” I did not realize the glaring difference between the two
    Englishes until my teacher corrected my pronunciations of hammock, ladle, and siphon. Classmates
    laughed because I pronounce accept as except, success as sussess. I was in the Creative Writing
    conservatory, and yet words failed me when I needed them most.

    Suddenly, understanding flower is flour wasn’t enough. I rejected the English that had never seemed
    broken before, a language that had raised me and taught me everything I knew. Everybody else’s
    parents spoke with accents smarting of Ph.D.s and university teaching positions. So why couldn’t mine?

    My mother spread her sunbaked hands and said, “This is where I came from,” spinning a tale with the
    English she had taught herself.

    When my mother moved from her village to a town in Malaysia, she had to learn a brand new language
    in middle school: English. In a time when humiliation was encouraged, my mother was defenseless
    against the cruel words spewing from the teacher, who criticized her paper in front of the class. When
    she began to cry, the class president stood up and said, “That’s enough.”

    “Be like that class president,” my mother said with tears in her eyes. The class president took her under
    her wing and patiently mended my mother’s strands of language. “She stood up for the weak and used
    her words to fight back.”

    We were both crying now. My mother asked me to teach her proper English so old white ladies at Target
    wouldn’t laugh at her pronunciation. It has not been easy. There is a measure of guilt when I sew her
    letters together. Long vowels, double consonants — I am still learning myself. Sometimes I let the
    brokenness slide to spare her pride but perhaps I have hurt her more to spare mine.

    As my mother’s vocabulary began to grow, I mended my own English. Through performing poetry in
    front of 3000 at my school’s Season Finale event, interviewing people from all walks of life, and writing
    stories for the stage, I stand against ignorance and become a voice for the homeless, the refugees, the
    ignored. With my words I fight against jeers pelted at an old Asian street performer on a New York
    subway. My mother’s eyes are reflected in underprivileged ESL children who have so many stories to tell
    but do not know how. I fill them with words as they take needle and thread to make a tapestry.

    In our house, there is beauty in the way we speak to each other. In our house, language is not broken
    but rather bursting with emotion. We have built a house out of words. There are friendly snakes in the
    cupboard and snacks in the tank. It is a crooked house. It is a little messy. But this is where we have
    made our home.

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