Yicheng Wang, ASA2 A02, Week 3

I would say this week’s poem, “Waking” by W.P., wakes me up from passive learning about Asian American studies to active exploring this topic. My interest in literature has driven my interest in Asian American study. There is no reason for yellow faces to be neglected; to some extends, they contributes to the world as well as the White did, especially in academia. The author of the poem “Waking” is obviously an influential character, but being treated as Asian American with racism negatively affected his or her career path. What make me more angry was such a discrimination even plundered the author’s achievement in the field of higher education and gave it to others without any prices. 

Immersing myself in the poem with lots of rhetorical devices, I can feel the author’s emotion. The author applied ambiguity with respect to the word, “wall”. In the very beginning, it only refers to the wall that the lab mouse flung against (6). Later on, after utilizing connotation for “the lab mouse”, I realize the lab mouse is the overtones of Asian American faculty. By this way, the author used metonymy, “This human mouse, this yellow faced colleague” (30), to indicate two things. To readers, the author want to show his experience more directly for people to imagine; stealing the author’s achievement and dismissal is as painful for the author as flinging a lab mouse against the wall. To those who look Asian American discriminately, the author might be willing to tell them what they ruined toward Asian American was like eating buns made by human’s blood. The biologist is only a representative of those who discriminate the Asian American. The action of biologist who flung the lab mouse against the wall is a kind of irony. Besides the apparent meaning of “wall”, it also means the traumatic experience of Asian American, like the author that being fired. For deeper understanding, along with using three repletions from line 17 to 19, it produces deeper levels of emphasis, clarity, amplification, and emotional effect. We can have a sense of resentful that the “wall” should be the conscience of people that discriminated Asian American, being flung by the blood Asian American sacrificed. After reading this poem, I’m deep in thought. Racism produces inequality, and it shouldn’t exist everywhere, let alone in academia! Everyone in this world is responsible to wake up and fight for equality.

Question: When this kind of racism toward Asian American begins to change?

image: https://images.app.goo.gl/X4zSxnUjoiqdMotY6

Reference:

Valverde, K.-L. C., & Dariotis, W. M. (2020). Fight the tower: Asian American women scholars resistance and renewal in the academy. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.