Moron, the Form (on Bucak's "Eight Questions... and her formal constraints)

Excuse the punny title; I’m more of the moron because I overlooked the form for far too long. So, to make up for this, this post is purely about form.

I’ve been going back and forth trying to place the formality of this piece, and the more I read it, the less formal it gets. In fact, the further I get into the reading itself, the more I feel included in what Bucak is attempting to say (although, of course, her speaker doesn’t want to completely divulge her purpose, keeping with the façade that she still just figuring shit out). And although Bucak initially seems insensitive (distancing the reader), at the end she becomes more amiable. Looking at the form on the page, the beginning of the piece has more of the switching of dialogues, more of the play-like qualities; the end, the more amiable bit, has less of the constraint. So, wondering how the form affects the piece, I have to assume that the formal constraint causes the tone and language to be terser, even obtuse. As Bucak puts it: “Me has been in this play before, and is not trying to be a jerk about it, but she kind of is.” Bucak knows she’s created a jerk of a character (though her definition of a jerk must be much different than mine; I kind of like her jerk), but that Me doesn’t feel like the same type of Me as the beginning. It feels like she’s slightly altered, changed, or, dare I say it, grown! But grown over the course of 3 pages? Yeah right…

What my winding introduction is trying to say is that while yes, we all want to see some growth or change in a character in a story, it’s not logical to see it happen that quickly, and it’s the form that’s making us think this.

Briefly, I’d like to ramble about the play as a form. Initially, I credited, even yearned the piece to be less formal than it is because I thought that a play was less formal, that there was room for interpretation, thought, even room for the actors to improvise. Bucak even writes variations for those actors, noting a tendency towards improvisation. She even has variations of the variations (Question 2 variation C). While this is all well and good, (nice, even, for Bucak’s ‘jerk’) by inserting multiple improvisations, she is taking away the You’s (or reader’s) ability to improvise. It’s as if she’s assumed (or lived) what the reader will do or say, but is leaving the guise that you (as the reader) can actually choose what to do/say. And this is where I began wondering more of the formality of her play.

Plays are meant to be performed, leaving room for actor improvisation, but the audience will typically never know when a line has been altered. However, Bucak’s piece is not a play; it is an essay (of sorts) and hardly begs to be performed. And because an actor, the You, is actually YOU, you have no problem filling the role. What Bucak takes from You (the reader, the actor) is space for you to think about what she is speaking of. Okay, I’m not saying you’re not thinking while you’re reading the piece, I’m just positing that you’re experiencing a different kind of thinking while reading. You’re filling a role, which is sort of liberating, to be part of a piece; however, in filling that role you are also limited by how much you can change what is being done/said/thought about you (or by you). You are both implicated and not, though, in either sense, because Bucak has already prescribed variations of certain events, you can never be certain if she really is implicating you or someone else. Either way, though, your space to think (and thus talk) is limited by the construct of the play. Furthermore, Bucak’s blurring of the lines (as the other posts have mentioned, so I really won’t go into this aspect) between You and Me complicates the equation. Both You and Me are present and acting, but the construct of the play truncates their abilities (their, meaning the reader’s) to think beyond the faux improvisation.

However, as I noted earlier, if you take a look at the last page versus the second/third, the last has far less of the variations and structured dialogue, feeling more relaxed and agreeable. I chalk that up to the form again. Our sense of Bucak’s friendliness towards the end doesn’t come with a shift in language (diction/syntax affecting tone), but a shift in form. On the third page, the page made up mostly of oscillating variations and a confusion with the You and Me, Bucak limits the reader’s ability to speak (think), truncating any stray thoughts (improvisations) with variations. What she is also limiting, by using the play-form more readily (more dialogue switching between the cast), is room for her speaker (more the Me [to the audience] than the Me [to You]) to speak.

It is in those moments where the ‘Me’ speaks to the audience that the most is learned about the Me’s situation, thoughts, etc. It is also in that moment that the reader is free from his/her ‘You’ role responsibilities to contemplate Bucak’s divulgences. The more room Bucak gives her ‘Me’ to speak, the more room the reader has to think, and, oddly enough, talk. In short, the space teaches the reader how to read Bucak’s affect. It is easier to note her flourishes, as in the Me [to the audience]’s answer to Question 7 (the whimsical bit about Pops), along with the abrupt stoppage of the flourish with the injection of the structured dialogue again (Can I call you Patty?). Even on the less-structured last page, the play-form attempts its truncation. One can, of course, posit the Chorus as being a more truncating force than the You (or vice versa), but it is just the inclusion of the play-form that does this. It’s as if Bucak has such a hyper-awareness of how she is supposed to act in certain situations (with You, with the audience, with the Turkish Chorus) that she is constantly cutting herself off with tangents or variations. Though those mostly come earlier, as noted, the last page attempts to do so as well. It’s that post-modern self-awareness of “I know what you’re going to say before you say it so I’ll just put it in here so you don’t have to say it. Yeah, I’m that aware of what you think of me and I think of me and the world thinks of me. Here.” What’s interesting, though, is that she chooses to have her final flourish at the end, never coming back to the play-form constraint. Although the last line is a bit cheesy and over-dramatic, the end is a nod to a more romantic realm of the individual (juxtaposed against many definitions of person/place/culture/individualism). Is it an abandonment of the formal constraint by which she and her situation (and us and our situations) has put her (and us) in? Probably not. But it is a freeing of her voice, and thus, our thought, which is welcome enough.

Two Papatyas (on Ayse Bucak, posted for Rebecca Epstein)

Two Papatyas

"Eight Questions You Would Ask Me If I Told You My Name" is, reduced, a clever package tied neatly, a script with elements that fall into their grooves and remain.  It is so tidy that to read it is to feel a shiver of perfection, an appreciation for a well-oiled machine with smooth, sliding, soundless parts.  But that perfection of form says to the reader, I defy you to peel away my layers; I defy you to look deeper.  And so many a reader likely reads the script in all its orderly design and puts it down sated, though one might argue that this satiation is nothing but a desert mirage.  To peel away the layers is to ask the following:

1) Why such a compact, delicious package anyway?
2) And what’s with the pronouns?
3) What function does the Turkish chorus serve, really?
4) What is the tone of the piece?  Does the form affect the tone?
5) How are we supposed to feel about each of the characters?
6) Is there anger here?
7) Is there self-pity here?  Is that a bad thing?
8) What, then, is the point of this essay?  Where is Papatya going with it?

The reader cannot answer all of these questions at once, but perhaps the one question that will answer itself most readily, or will at least beg its own question most seductively, is the last one.  What is the point of Bucak’s Eight Questions?  Is it an exercise in sympathy-gathering?  Does she want the reader to feel for her, for her troubles as a Turkish-American, straddling two nations?  On the surface, yes.  Bucak feels bad for herself, a touch outraged, and the reader, who as someone outside of the piece, straddles the points-of-view of all characters, especially You and Me, should feel some of this outrage, too. 

But there is more to it.  Bucak calls the interrogator You, the person who is mired in misunderstanding, ignorance, and insensitivity, not to mention the dreary cliché of always asking the same questions as every other You, and by calling the interrogator You, she is also addressing the reader, who is not Bucak, but is an other, a You.  Bucak is saying, if we met, you would ask me these questions too, and this is what I would be thinking.  So as frustrated as the reader feels on Bucak’s behalf, the reader must also acknowledge that she, too, would make the same offenses in Bucak’s presence. 

Bucak takes it even a step further, by transliterating the entire issue into the Turkish realm, as when she meets a Turk or travels to Turkey, and then she adopts the “’help me’ expression” herself, that so often graces the faces of her American interrogators.  So in a way, Bucak is admitting that everyone, under the right circumstances, is an ignorant jerk, and she just so happens to have a name in America that makes her subject to this ignorance more of the time than most.

So, yes, there is a satisfying balance of responsibility in this piece.  But ultimately, despite that balance, it appears as though Bucak herself is unaware of whatever her point might be.  Does she want the reader to feel guilty?  Does she want to relieve the reader of culpability?  Does she want to advise the reader on how to act should she encounter someone with an “unusual” name?  And if Bucak doesn’t know, then neither can the reader. 

Blog 1, Variation A: Ayşe Papatya Bucak

There is a growing population of people in America who fit into the definition of so-called “Third Culture Kids”. Third Culture Kids are identified as people who do not identify with one nationality, but rather, have cobbled together an identity which merges two or more cultures, a “third culture” identity. They have created community around this self-identification. There’s even a whole magazine written by TCK writers for TCK readers. Full disclosure: I identify as a Third Culture Kid myself as a first-generation Dutch American with dual citizenship. So I was intrigued by Ayşe Papatya Bucak’s essay, “Eight Questions You Would Ask Me if I Told You My Name”, because I see this growing multiculturalism as something which is significant in contemporary art, a defining hallmark of the current artistic period on the evolutionary continuum. This generation’s artists often do not fit into clearly delineated categories, neither in style, nor in genre, nor in cultural tradition or identity. I would argue that the current generation of artists across all disciplines is the generation of hybridization, and Bucak displays this in both theme as well as form in this essay.

I love that Bucak chooses to frame the essay with an exploration of her name, because what is more connected to identity than one’s identifier- one’s name? Using this micro issue, Bucak essays the larger theme of identity and borders. Bucak writes about the failure to communicate with both Americans and Turks, though she alternates between affiliation with either group. She’s fiercely protective of her Turkish name and heritage (You: What Are You? / Me: My father is Turkish / Me [to audience]: As if I am not). She denies the attempts to Americanize her name to “Patty”. Yet she also cannot connect to her Turkish side, as she does not speak the language and admits “I’m afraid I’m not a very good Turk; I don’t know much about it.” She inhabits an identity somewhere in between the two, not accepting attempts to exoticize her or push her out of the parameters of “normal American”- You: “Do you like having an unusual name?” / Me: “It’s not an unusual name.” Ultimately, she decides the middle ground, what I would call a “third culture” identity, is acceptable and completely valid as a place to plant one’s flag: “a Turk who doesn’t feel Turkish, an American who isn’t only American, a writer who likes to ask questions but not to answer them.” I like this (non)conclusion as an answer to the essay’s questions about identity, because to me it encapsulates what people in the 21^st century are really grappling with in an era of widespread travel, the Internet, and exposure to ever expanding possibilities: an erasure of borders. Bucak rejects the definitions of the old school of thinking where Bucak is an “unusual” name. In an interesting way, she creates a new baseline definition of a contemporary America that reflects the actual inhabitants rather than those of the old world. From this baseline definition she makes her arguments, with a modernistic rejection of a divisive, dichotomous “reality” where names like Smith and Jones are “normal” and “Bucak” is exotic. Bucak rubs that chalk line out and says she’s not sure what she is, but that’s simply not the line anymore. Somewhere in the muddled mixture of dirt and chalk is where she is, where we all are.

For me, the old adage “form follows function” is a sacred truism that I often find myself judging experimental forms through. What I appreciate about Bucak’s piece is that the straying from a linear narrative style makes absolute sense and supports rather than detracts from her theme. Each structural choice is made for a reason. She displays the same erasing of borders and hybridization that is explored in the essay’s content, in her form. She slips into the format of a play, borrowing across boundaries from ancient Greek tragedies to make the Greek Chorus new, now playfully identified as a Turkish chorus to explore modern themes. I think her play format works well here, because it forces the reader to engage as the “you” in this essay, literally as an actor in her play/life, whether willing or unwilling. The reader is placed into the center of this sticky mess of multiculturalism and hybridity and identity, so I think the appointment of that role by the essay’s author carries some interesting implications and adds a layer of meaning to the essay that would not have been there had she written it in straightforward prose. Further, the different variations on each question the “You” character asks (Question 1, variation A; Question 1, variation B, etc.) once again enhance this idea of multiple identities and possibilities rather than a black and white dichotomous world where there is one simple question and one simple answer. Now, the “You” isn’t just inhabiting one role, but several simultaneously, and Bucak isn’t inhabiting one role, but several. Instead, we get variations, an interesting and pointed word choice in and of itself- "the state or fact of differing, e.g. from a former state or value, from others of the same type, or from a standard".

The Turkish chorus deserves a few more lines than I afforded it above, I realize. On a second read-through, I see again how well they complicate and deepen the essay, the tension they provide the essay with as another voice in addition to the “You” (thus also removing that dichotomy in the essay of merely “Me” and “You”). The Turkish chorus belligerently (and humorously) champions the Turkish identity at all turns, wanting to push Bucak back into a clearly delineated box where muddiness of identity doesn’t exist- Me: “Where are you from?” / You: “Philadelphia” / Chorus: “She’s lying” / Me: “…I answer Philadelphia because it is the city of my upbringing, the city of my American side. And because, sometimes, I like to remind people that while my name is foreign, I am not.” / Chorus: “She is.” In a way, it’s pretty apt that the chorus in the piece is borrowed from an ancient, clearly-defined, old-school play format because they represent old-school thinking in the essay, the traditional dichotomous thinking that the essayist is pushing against. I suspect the chorus may represent the older generation of Turks and an older generation in most cultures, in fact, who fear or resent what they perceive to be a loss of cultural identity as new generations of immigrants and an increasing globalization begin to blur boundaries and hybridize. I appreciate Bucak’s use of them to interject humor and an argumentative voice, as I do her choice to create a “You” character to put us as readers into a role. Bucak wins high marks on form following function in my book.

Of course, this essay is about far more than a name. It speaks to concepts of cultural identity, the urge to define or to be defined, borders, hybridization, the influence of a surrounding culture on one’s development, and more. I could easily write another 1000 words about this short piece, address the political issues and Bucak’s conflicted statements about being a writer in America versus being a writer in Turkey. But I will leave it at this: I really like what this piece says about contemporary society. Bucak really embraces the theme of hybridization, this word that I think is absolutely the most exciting thing about this era. I think it’s a fine essay, worthy of further examination for its freshness and representation of a new era of writers and 21^st century-relevant themes.

A Short Essay on Being With Jenny Boully's "A Short Essay on Being"

I have a special kind of respect for things that bother me in ways I don’t understand. Another way of saying it might be that there are times when I find myself unable to ignore things even though I’m sure I don’t like them. It’s annoying when people say something’s “compelling” when they mean “good.” There should be a space for things that compel us but we don’t like. I don’t mind an occasional burr in my ass or fart in my temple. I don’t mind the occasional off remark. I still think about how there are enough jokes about dead babies that the dead-baby joke is actually a genre, and I still wonder why I am interested in these jokes even though I really like babies.

I’ve been having this feeling lately with Jenny Boully’s essay, and the fact that I’m still having it even though we’ve already discussed the essay in class has precipitated a need to exorcise Boully from my spiritual universe, or at least come to terms with the fact that I can never, at this point, un-read “A Short Essay on Being.” You could say I’m compelled to write this post.

Several of my classmates liked this essay. “Sophisticated” was one word, “subtle” was another. Toward the end of class, Ander said something to the effect of “well, I think there’s more to say about it than ‘Plastic Bag,’ and I think that’s a strong-enough endorsement” (and if I’m misremembering or mischaracterizing that, Ander, feel free to air me out in front of my peers). His assessment sort of sums up the feeling I was trying to explain a couple of paragraphs ago: Can I respect something I don’t like? Can I be compelled by it in a positive way?

Anyway, my classmates have already been subjected to my tense body language and vaguely combative comments, but I still feel a drive to boil down my issues and present them to you here—a tray of small, ugly food.

In the essay, Boully presents a series of scenes in which people say boorish and ignorant things to

her and she sits back like a bad dog and takes it. She doesn’t correct the mistakes of her friends and associates, who come off as dim, culturally insensitive people more interested in talking than listening—a strawman of the American individual. She doesn’t correct because it’s not the Thai way—a “way” she solemnly adopts even though she makes a rather big deal about how she’s from Texas, and what’s so hard to believe about that (you bigot). (The metatexual irony here—which I’m not suggesting Boully is unaware of—is that the whole essay is a correction.)

Later, she makes a point that pot Thai is poor folk’s food, but manages to find a place in Brooklyn where she can spend thirteen dollars on it. (I lived in Brookyln for six years and ate what was probably pad Thai every month or so. It was $7. I was the guy who ordered it at the “Native Thai” spice level, which usually forced me into the uncomfortable position of having to say, “I promise, I can handle it”—and I’m still sure they turned it down a little, which is sorta racist if you think about it).

Presumably, the place Boully went to was advertised as “authentic,” otherwise the anecdote deflates even further. And why, I wonder at the end, does Boully make the effort for transitive-property friends who seem so unbearably lame? In my more frustrated moments, my answer to that question is that if she didn’t, she wouldn’t be able to write this cool essay.

I’ve long been aware of the fact that people say they want “authentic” experiences and then don’t want them once they’re actually confronted with them. I’ve also long been aware of the fact that humans are, seemingly by nature, full-on operas of self-contradictory behavior and belief systems. But are those Boully’s “points”? (And I put “points” in quotes to acknowledge that my approach here might be skewered as regressive and masculine and indifferent to the fluidity and immorality of raw experience itself—I point it out because I know I’m being old-fashioned, but, like Boully, I can’t help who I am.)

If they are her points—or, if that’s what this essay illustrates—I’m skeptical. The instability of Boully’s cultural identity is so beautifully performed that by the end of the essay, I don’t trust any of her opinions or experiences. As a result, I find it easy to ignore her arguments about authenticity. I find it easy to think that Boully might just be a slightly timid—but also slightly mean—person with odd tastes and standards. (I even find it sort of easy to ignore her pain in these difficult situations, which is not a nice thing to say, and I’m struggling with that.)

I agree with Ander and my Boully-supporting classmates that the essay is very cleverly arranged. (If there’s subtlety and sophistication, that’s where I see it: In the essay’s leanness and balance, in the way it seems like Boully has found an electron for every proton.) But is that—to invoke a fiction workshop trope that I feel a sort of queasy bond to—what’s really “at stake”? I don’t necessarily need a struggle from Boully. I don’t need a skyscraping moment of revelation. I don’t need her to be standing on one side of the river saying, “And from that moment on, I was never the same.”

But shouldn’t I be able to ask for those things, especially when what we’re dealing with is presumably of active and real importance to Boully as a human being traversing the wilderness of identity? Isn’t this “important stuff”? I wonder what she thinks the sum of these anecdotes and experiences are (again, realizing that this is an old-fashioned concern, but one I’m willing to defend). What direction is her thinking moving in? Is it even thought in motion, or is she just presenting a series of sad misunderstandings? Is she really problematizing the nature of identity in ways that are novel? Is there morality here? Is she frustrated by all this free-range insensitivity? Is she, as my colleague and pal Justin Yampolsky suggested in his post here, presenting a farce? If so, for whose benefit? And if not… well, for whose benefit? And if for nobody’s benefit, then why?

I’m taking calls on this. I’ve been bothered by this essay since I read it the first week of class. I’m still bothered. There’s a lot of merit in that. Re-invoking Ander, I do feel like I could talk about it for a while and I do think that means something. I think I’m just having a vaguely Emperor’s New Clothes moment: I’m hearing good things, but not understanding them, or they’re just not clearly stated enough for me yet, so I’m starting to wonder if maybe we’re just being smart people who like to talk and are lending this a lot more weight than it has. (Not to demean writing that relies on ambiguity and ellipses of consciousness—despite how buttoned-up I’m sure I sound here, I like freak music and nonlinear art and I’m perfectly happy watching David Lynch movies without making any attempt to “solve the puzzle,” a laissez faire mindset I might’ve inherited from my Dad, who frequently tells me that he thinks plot is for suckers.)

Surely this could be chewed on a little more though. Aren’t we writers? Articulators? [Thumps chest, stares at the ocean.] Again, that might be me being old-fashioned—I’m neurotic by birth and driven to hermeneutics by training. I don’t know why I’ve laughed at dead-baby jokes and I probably never will. It’s working at a level that, like Boully’s essay, is probably so complex that we’re just not built to get it. That won’t stop me from thinking about it though. I’ll be here with a chisel, chiseling.

Mike Powell

Boully as Fool, Essay as Farce

Aren’t we proud of the ease in which we accept other cultures and ethnicities into our society and their practices into our own lives? We send our children to karate lessons. Our dentists want to be Jewish in order to tell the jokes*. How does the saying go—everyone is Irish on St. Patrick’s day? I wouldn’t be where I am today spiritually without the help of my yoga teacher and guru, Chad Myers (Thanks, Chad!). We are one happy American melting pot sitting around a table at Pei-Wei, a non-denominational Asian restaurant, which is great because I love pad Thai and Katie loves Orange Chicken— our dining-out oriental style problems are forever solved (and believe me this was a problem).

* I often confuse “Seinfeld” with reality, which may or may not be a psychological disorder.

Yet, the problem that remains unsolved is our appetite for multiculturalism according to our own tastes. No fish sauce please. No canola oil. No chicken. No egg. We are sufferers of a Burger Kingnik’s paradigm and Jenny Boully’s essay, “A Short Essay on Being” tastes so strange, because suddenly having it your way doesn’t taste so good. It tastes like glass from the mirror I am forced to see myself in. I see an idiot (always, but now for different reasons) and how did I get here?

Boully’s Thai-ness asks of her silence, which often translates into foolishness. In the “enlightened” courts of Brooklyn and Austin, she plays/accepts/welcomes her role as “fool.” Like Shakespeare’s fools, Jenny Boully is a subtle agent of social criticism. She is lonely and lovable, sad and perceivably* unthreatening, and never outspoken of others’ mistakes, knowing by the final scene the real fools will recognize their errors, then a wedding (Mazel tov!). What better way to essay about our nation’s misguided exercises in inclusion/exclusion, then by stringing together (comedic?) scenes of well-intended (some?), yet incredibly off performers falling through the holes of their own idealism?

*I say perceivably here because all fool’s, at least the good ones, have their revenge. Feste gets revenge on Malvolio in Twelfth Night. Hunky Justin is left with blue balls and perhaps an upset stomach.

Boully does so much with so little space, I know our classes will want to attach a lot to this essay. So not trying to reduce the seriousness of Boully’s piece here, but I would like to consider some of its possible comedic elements as my contributing thread. It’s a stretch, but think of this essay in the mode of farce. On http://www.thefreedictionary.com/farce look at the first definition under “farced.” Pad, suspiciously, shows up. Everyone back to your college Shakespeare survey courses. Let’s make a checklist of the key components of farce:

Verbal Humor/Word Play: Bouly’s essay begins by playing with the words pad and pot. A pad you live in, a pad “you bleed on,” a pad you write on. Phuk-et/ Fuck-it.

Mistaken Identity: Boully, the Thai national, the Spanish speaker, the Puerto Rican, the Asian (of the scholarship winning variety), the fake speaker of Thai, the Mexican, the Taiwanese girlfriend.

Innuendo/ Sexual Humor: Buddhist anal cleansings, douching with lavender, blue balls.

Poetic Justice: We are literally left unfulfilled.

I am not suggesting that “A Short Essay on Being” uses inflated or fabricated scenes, but are not a good many of her anecdotes reflections of a certain type of absurdity? And farce allows for an indirect-directness, which may be the m.o. of essaying (?) The college girls having their taste of an “exotic” culture consume too much and their faces turn bright red. The Soros fellowship committee has no idea what criticism* means. Beyond the initial absurdity of Boully’s mistaken identity as a Spanish speaker, she is scolded for her inability to speak her “native” language, when a few decades ago the scolding would have been, perhaps, for her doing so. We are laughing, laughing at all these idiots, who want to correct Boully for her mispronunciation, until suddenly, amongst the padding of all these absurdities on top of one another, the realization occurs that we are being implicated ourselves (at least I am. My friends will tell you I am often unintentionally political incorrect.)

*Did Boully intend for this to be ironic?

Maybe that’s the sign of a successful essay. Its ability to find the narrow hole of which it can pass in order for it be heard and take effect. Pointing the finger is never easy, so Boully doesn’t point, at least not directly. While laughing at the Asian family in a Chinatown absent of fresh rice noodles, the finger I (I am not Thai) point turns on me…

I remember working in the campus bookstore, when two Indian girls asked me, “Where can we find the Hindi textbooks?” “Hindi. What’s Hindi?” I asked back. When they explained to me that Hindi was the official language of the Republic of India, I responded, “I thought Indians, spoke Indian.” Unlike Boully, these girls promptly corrected me and did nothing to hide that they thought I was an idiot. As they left the store, I do not doubt that my nineteen-year-old self thought “ I have never been with an Indian girl,” which now reminds me of verse pinned by my ingenious college roommate Matt Ward:

I want a chicken breast sandwich.

Hold the chicken.

Hold the sandwich.

We strip down/water down and in this case pour thick orange syrup over other cultures in order to transform them into pleasurable experiences (sex, food, quick spirituality). Yes, our ideal society is dedicated to tolerance, but what are we really tolerating? Only are own comfortable sugary conceptions of other cultures? This is not an easy point to make, but a good essay must/requires-an exchange between writer and reader that allows for fluidity. Boully does not soapbox us. She acquires her ingredients and she cooks her dish Thai-style. And if the Indian girls I offended hadn’t already corrected me this would be my opportunity to apologize.

pot-see-you

For those of us who have never experienced the anus-cleansing power of real Buddhism, this essay is a revelation. Here is my personal epiphany: "ethnic" literature, by which I mean literature written in English for consumption by anglophones about ethnic minorities, is generally in the form of either 1) a confession, or 2) a commercial.

As an American by birth and lifetime consumer of coagulated masses of day-glo orange "pad thai," I know that the most palatable way to get Americans to eat something is to present it as a down-home recipe, representative of an entire culture, but brought to us nevertheless by a lovable stereotype. In other cases, its a sly huckster, versed in our culture, but tempting us to enjoy some sinful indulgence or freakish thrill. Jenny Boully's "A Short Essay on Being" manages to employ neither of those approaches 99 per cent of the time, making it–to date–the most successful essay nominally about "ethnic food," which is at least as prestigious a title as "Winner of the Essay Prize 2010."

Boully's narrative runs with the metaphor of food as constituent of its consumers. In her world you truly are what you eat, and the only impediment to understanding is a certain lack of taste, both literally and culturally. In the scene wherein the narrator is (finally) "recognized" as Thai, we find out Boully's husband, is not a "good husband," because he is apparently Thai, or apparently German-Italian, but because he has taken upon himself to involve himself the ingredients which go into a given dish, rather than simply allowing himself to be served. The young ladies of the dormitory, Pretty-boy" Justin, and the "real Buddhist" are all here (both in the piece and, apparently, on the earth) to be served, and to dispose of their utensils as they please.

In "on Being," as in the Thai language, the emphasis is on "sound and inflection." Boully's tone acts as a companion and illustration of the cultural skirmishes of the piece, and vice versa. This is most apparent in her handling of the word "pad," but also in her repeated assertions of her own Thai "authenticity." Her repeated decision to act politely and quietly rather than to engage in argument with her detractors is "the Thai way." By these assertion, she both places us in the position of identifying with her frustration and disappointment, and makes it increasingly difficult for us to question her authenticity, that is, her ability to represent herself. Her silence is not the hush of defeat, but the quiet, and not infrequently derisive laughter of the genuine article. Her narrative and cultural authority become dually established by the same subtle movements of apparent non-contention, punctuated (I'm thinking here of the man who makes his girlfriend "douche with lavender oil and get abortions.") by moments of controlled violence.

Boully's snapshot scenes pose for us not only the question of her own identity, but that of everyone who comes in contact with her. The "real Buddhist," as Boully refers to him, would be lost without the hyper-authenticity her apparent submission to him implies. He would, at the risk of spelling it out, simply be another American tourist who'd allowed one or several persons to sodomize him with a water-hose. For those of us who recognize sodomy as its own reward, this may seem strange, until we remember that the experience alone is not sufficient for this man unless it is somehow authenticated. This authentication process is revealed to us by Boully as requiring nothing but bluster and ironclad ignorance, though the implication is that this man, and many like him would spend their own lives, and hers, to protect it.

Boully's language play is infectious. Her "pot-see-you," instantly brought to mind (for me) the expression "pot calling the kettle black," which has always confounded me. Are not both the pot and the kettle black from being over (what I presume is) an open flame? Perhaps the kettle is kept elsewhere...but if the kettle happen to be black, is this expression anything other than propaganda? A type of hypocrisy of hypocrisy? Maybe I'm over-thinking it. I recall my first grade teacher telling me that people who looked like me, in a continent she had never been to, ate nothing but bananas and peanut butter. To her, Africa was not only the largest country in the world, as it is to so many Americans, but also a means of affirming her identity–and in this case her authority–as a pedagogue. I recall eyeing the treat she'd had the whole class prepare in anticipation of Black History Month, and thinking there was something of the push-button 1950's ants-on-a-log quality to this supposedly "authentic" African cuisine. And yet I also recall wondering whether the starving black faces on the television weren't starving as a result of massive diarrhea resulting from an exclusive diet of bananas and peanut butter.

I only said "99 per cent" earlier out of respect for what I believe this, and all successful essays are attempting to do. This essay must, at some point, be a type of confession. Even if it's only the confession of a woman who poisons a young, promising American musician with fish sauce, since there is here (as is always present in confessions, no matter how sincere) something of the manifesto. There can be no consideration of the formal qualities of an essay without a grasp of how deftly it weaves itself into its subject. A successful essay could, in this definition, be one in which the seam between the tutor text and those surrounding it is indivisible, literally limitless. Boully's essay is not this limitless animal. It is far too human and, as such, must skirt confession as a sort of parody of a parody. It must do this so it can give us an opportunity to find ourselves in this essay, not on "one side" of any given "issue" or another, but amidst the varied and often mortifying roles we are called on to play. This is where she does it. This is where she slips us the fish sauce.

-dan ashton chevalier

On "A Short Essay on Being"

I approached this essay with the smug satisfaction of someone who loathes pad thai. My allegiances lie with pad kee mao — pot kee mao? — an infinitely superior dish [though its "authenticity" is unknown to me]. From this vantage point on the moral high ground, my nose can point even a little bit more skyward because I know how Jenny Boully feels. People often ask me where I'm from more than once. They see the last name or my face, they hear me speak and "I'm from Orlando" becomes an insufficient answer. Thus, Boully's essay interests me not because I find it is as formally adventurous as its narrator does. I see paragraphs without explicit transitions almost every time I critique a paper for my Rhetoric students. Boully's essay delights me because she examines and unravels the nexuses of privilege and oppression with deftness and stringency. By forcing the reader to make connections between a series of loosely related anecdotes, she makes us play a game of racism/sexism/classism connect-the-dots that facilitates our understanding of the bigotry discussed without seeming heavy-handed.

In an indirect way that she attributes to her Thai-ness, Boully asks a number of deceptively simple questions. What does it mean to be Asian? Are fellowships for people of color exclusionary of those who come from working- or lower middle-class backgrounds? Why can't white people disambiguate Thailand from Taiwan and China? Do people not know that asking her if her "father is in the military" is akin to asking if he raped her mother during a war? Why do white people, who had her believing herself to be a Thai national from an early age, refuse to listen to her when she tells them that "pad thai" is the Thai-American version of General Tso's chicken? Boully's essay works so well so often because it has some wonderfully elegant answers.

[...] he began to speak to me in Spanish and I told him that I didn't understand and he looked at me sternly and shame on me because I didn't know my mother's language shame on me. Within a sentence, Boully implicitly addresses internalized racism, the gendered nature of colonialism, and the paradox of being ethnically ambiguous. The catch with being multiracial, multiethnic, or multicultural is that you belong to everyone enough for them to shame you and no one enough for you to actually fit in. And so, I came to find out that a food that I had loved, a food that had produced so many euphorias in my family, was a food of the poor.

Her parents were doctors; they were from Bangkok, and they were paying out of pocket for their daughter to go to school. There are 48 countries and four billion people in Asia, and yet, many forms continue to restrict this sixty percent of the world's population to a single box. People of Mongolian, Pakistani, Japanese, and Laotian descent are lumped together regardless of socio-economic status and various other markers of success. Boully is incisive in her analysis of grants and fellowships targeted toward people of color, and I appreciate that she didn't shy away from naming names. Among many institutions that have endowments and money to give away, there is this idea that people of color are so all-the-same that getting non-working class POCs with all of the socio-cultural and economic benefits of white privilege is like a two-for-one deal. We had it very well, and we knew we had it very well. It wasn't until I went to college that I realized that I did not have it so well [...] I could not compete with Asians.

And though I usually do not pass as Thai. Passing is very rarely framed as something that one does with dire consequences. "The usual mechanism of passing," per Harryette Mullen's germinal essay "Optic White," "requires an active denial" of the non-white identity (72). It is a purposeful selection of a "racially pure" white identity in order to "strengthen the white identity of each successive generation (72). The idea of passing almost always foregrounds, venerates whiteness, and it is used disparagingly by those who do not possess this dubious luxury. Boully gives the reader the obverse, which mediates the cultural baggage attached to the phenomenon. Instead of it being "a kind of theft, a grand larceny" of whiteness that leads to the type of "race melodrama" that Mullen tackles in her essay, it is the location of one of the essay's few instances of warm, supportive extrafamilial community (Mullen 73, 80). He told me to enjoy myself in the land where so many plastic hamburger-chain toys were made.

Instead of correcting her, I thanked my friend from grad school for correcting me. In my reading of "A Short Essay on Being," Boully does not win the battle with her graduate school friend by letting her get away with such blatant racism. She loses because said friend will "probably never [...] come to [Boully] for forgiveness later." While I understand that doing Racism/Sexism/Classism 101 for every single bigot in one's life is exhausting, discouraging, and impossible, given how important food is to Boully's cultures, it is maddening and sad to watch her let so many macro- and microaggressions pass without active resistance. Perhaps this is where Boully's asking of elegant questions becomes inadequate, where the easy takedowns of bougie psuedo-hippies become hackneyed. It is a space where Boully's critical eye — so withering in her handling of others — could be turned on herself. Or maybe, just maybe, that is Boully's neatest trick. Maybe it is my cultural insensitivity, my lack of understanding of the Thai way that makes her seem so silent about her complicity in her own oppression.