Wang Ping’s poem The Cost of Speaking elucidates the double tragedies of speaking out and not speaking out against racial and gender discrimination in the workforce. Specifically in academia, Ping beautifully writes about her sorrows of being denied tenure for a full professorship even though her white male colleague earned tenure without having the same scholarly accolades. Her metaphor of the academic industry as a “jungle” was genius, especially because the jungle operates operates under a biological hierarchy ranked by animal predators, prey, and other living organisms like plants and detritivores. From what I was able to interpret, I believe the author wanted to portray the sorrows that women of color face because of racial and gender hierarchies that of academia.
The cost of speaking out against these discriminations is the nasty retaliation of racist, sexist higher education administrators, who all conspired against Ping to blacklist her from publishing and funding resources, which are central factors to the economic livelihood of any scholar in general. On the other hand, not speaking out also causes one to “die young”, in which Ping actually developed physical and mental health issues because of the enforced silence against these discriminations. In the end, Ping lists the reasons for “reasons to speak,” saying that because of her identity as a Chinese woman scholar, she will forever profiled as a “minority, misfit, non-conformist, a mad woman in the attic.” By recognizing this unfortunate vulnerability, Wang stands by her decision to be a “big mouth,” a person who speaks out against social injustices. In her mind, “There’s no other way to live.”
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