A Fan Letter to Jerry Colonna, after reading <Reunion>
Dear Jerry,
After finishing reading your new book, “Reunion”, I couldn’t sleep well that night. Tossing and turning, these three questions lingered in my consciousness.
- Who (that might relate to that identity) have I not seen?
- How did it benefit me or my family, including my ancestors, not to see or recognize such things?
- How have I been complicit in and benefited from systemic Othering?
Who that might relate to my identity have I not seen? Names and faces of my female ancestors, some of them whose names or faces are unknown to me, emerged most of all. Of course, I have seen my mother and my grandmothers but I can’t say I’ve seen them as women, as people for their life experiences, without the labels of mother and grandmother.
Except for bits of stories I was told by them and some direct experiences I had with them, I don’t know much about their inner worlds. However, in the dreamy state, I somehow felt the suffering from their deepest wounds from living as women. Many voices were quietly telling me what it felt like and how hurtful at times it was to live as women in a patriarchal society.
Growing up, I’ve observed and even had firsthand experiences with suffering from the patriarchal culture of Korea. I suffered too but I didn’t try to recognize it, because perhaps I knew subconsciously that it was too much to handle once I started recognizing them. When I got my first job, there were no role models for women to be successful at work. Rather than looking for the right woman role model, it was much easier to follow the rules set by men at workplaces to be successful. I think I emulated it well, yet deeply knowing that they didn’t suit me. This continued when I moved to the US too. At business school, I quickly learned that the best strategy was to emulate the existing patriarchal model of leadership to be successful in the world of business.
On the surface, I benefited from not recognizing the suffering of my female ancestors to gain a certain amount of success by moving up the ladder and building a great career. However, underneath all these achievements, I deeply felt I wasn’t good enough constantly. It was because I was trying to wear clothes that didn’t fit me. Instead of trying to look for new clothes, I criticized myself for not fitting in and constantly strived to fit in. This was what my female ancestors and all the women in the previous generations suffered from. They suffered in the society in which men set the rules. They were oppressed, ostracized, or even killed if they wanted to create rules for them.
Having been conditioned so much in this patriarchal culture of workplaces in the tech industry, I cannot deny that I have been complicit in and benefited from systemic Othering of people who share my gender. Early on in my career, I learned it’s best to NOT show any emotions at work and despised my female coworkers for showing any emotions. Whenever my mother offered me words of affirmation and encouragement that I could achieve anything in the world as I was growing up, I didn’t fully understand that it was coming from her own wish for herself. I took it for granted, but those words of affirmation and acceptance were what she desperately needed to hear. And perhaps the same applies to my grandmothers and their mothers.
In college, I took a class about Modern Female Writers. We read works written by Kate Chopin, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Jean Rhys, Virginia Woolf and Doris Lessing. Almost all of their protagonists either killed themselves or went mad. We asked the professor why the endings were all so depressing and discussed whether there could have been different endings in these stories. When these writers couldn’t even imagine alternate endings for their fictional stories, could we imagine different endings in our reality?
Turns out we could and that’s the progress in women’s rights we’ve achieved so far. Unlike the year 1923 when my grandmother was born and the year 1953 when my mother was born, in the year 2023 right now, I can vote, work for jobs I want, build a career, own properties under my name and I can even start my own business. Without the imagination of the unthinkable, sacrifices and devotions made by my female ancestors, this wasn’t possible. Yet still so much systemic Othering exists against my gender. We are denied education or opportunities in some parts of the world just because we are women. We don’t get to determine what we could do with our body in some states of the US. We don’t get paid the same amount as men for the same job. We don’t get promoted or hired for higher positions as men do at workplaces. There is still so much work to be done and I still suffer from not being enough.
I woke up the next day feeling uncomfortable but I didn’t feel despair so much. It was because of the connection you rekindled for all of us in your new book — the connection that we have with our ancestors and the next generations to come. Like the Zen master Thich Nhat Hanh used to say, “I am because you are. You are not because I am not.” We might be separated in this chronological timeline, past, present, and future, but we are all connected as co-conspirators to free ourselves from suffering. Whenever I suffer from feeling not enough, I will gently embrace myself as if my grandmothers would, reassuring that I belong here and now, instead of criticizing myself. Then perhaps I could do one good thing to contribute to making the world where my daughter will feel the sense of belonging without any doubt.
May we all feel safe and protected from inner and outer harms.
May we all be happy.
May we all be healthy and strong in our body, mind, and heart.
May we all live with the ease of wellbeing.
Thank you Jerry Colonna for calling for this reunion.
