“Unveiling Identity: How Names Bind Us in Kate Lu Sedor’s Captivating Exploration”
As if those six letters weren’t enough. As if I weren’t enough.
The small advantage I had when filling out my name on standardized tests — six graphite bubbles scattered across a Scantron grid, neatly finished while my classmates were still furiously scribbling — didn’t seem worth it to me in the face of so many other indignities, large and small, that threatened to crunch me down until there was nothing left.
It wasn’t just the harassment: It was the asterisk that had to be added to the end of “Lu” when I bought my first cell phone plan as an adult, because the registration system required a minimum of three characters for the last name field; it was the way others wanted to pin on me that tired stereotype of the small, submissive Asian female, and the sweet vowel sounds of my short name betrayed me, played right into the ill-fitting trope; it was the expression on interviewers’ faces when I applied for jobs, the raised eyebrows that still said to me, years after all the teasing that followed me from elementary to middle to high school: “Is that really all there is?”
Post Comment