Qianyang Hu ASA002 A02 Week 4

This week’s assigned readings continue to put emphasis on academic stresses and

hostilities that Asian Americans women have experienced. I am impressed by the

poem “Who Killed Soek-Fang Sim?” Soek-Fang Sim was an engaged and active

educator. Her colleagues and students spoke highly of her. However, some people

said some nasty stuff about her. They said Sim was a “dumb teacher, poorly

organized, incohesive, incomprehensible and dumb scholar”. As you know, rumors

went around so fast. The scandals fouled her reputation to some degree. In this way,

she did not pass her third-year review. Soon after, she died after a struggle with

breast cancer. There is no doubt that those vicious comments and words generated

negative impacts on Soak-Fang Sim’s health, because she valued her reputation as

a teacher and scholar very much. Her illness was aggravated significantly by anxieties.

Those rumors are some indirect factors that caused her death. Soek-Fang Sim’s death

shocked many people who worked with or knew her. I read their comments, and the

majority of them are positive. It indicates that there are severe academic hostilities

towards Asian American women.They are regarded as “dumb teacher, dumb scholar

and dumb woman” because of their color of skin. With extremely heavy stress, pressure

and workload, Asian American women are more likely to have relatively poor mental

and physical health. It is an unfair game. They are supposed to be a unity to fight

against their rights.

Question: How does college deal with these kinds of problems?

Image comes from

https://www.wsj.com/articles/harvard-cites-weaker-teacher-recommendations-for-asian-

american-applicants-1539721051

Reference

Won, M. (2007, November 6). Former professor Sim, 'a true original,' dies at 35.

Retrieved from https://themacweekly.com/62231/archive/former-professor-sim-a-true-

original-dies-at-35/

Valverde, Kieu-Linh Caroline. (2013) “Fight the Tower: A Call to Action of Women of

Color in Academia”. Seattle Journal for Justice, Vol. 12, Iss. 2, Article 5.

Retrieved from http://digitalcommons.law.seattleu.edu/sjsj/vol12/iss2/5