POWER OF WRITING. HILLARY WAN, BA FASHION DESIGN AND DEVELOPMENT, UAL.
Ever since I was a child, I was being taught the disciplines of “forgiveness” and “not attracting attentions to yourself”, as I am suppose to be a humble quiet girl now, and will be a humble quiet wife in the future. This faulty thinking has affected me greatly when encountering unpleasant experiences especially targeting me as a Chinese studying abroad. The course provided an academic key text that uses extreme biased examples targeting Chinese people. For example, “China seeks to imitate the West in everything, without understanding the reason why.” (Bartlett, Cole, and Rocamora, 2013) When questioning the key text’s integrity,
the tutor replied with “misunderstanding” and “over analyzing” the text. After pointing out the specific examples that are offensive and requiring an explanation to the phrase “misunderstanding the language”, the tutor swerved the conversation and did not reply with a straight answer. My family told me that there is nothing I can do, and the “haters will always hate”. Even when facing racial discrimination from fellow students, I was told by my parents to stay calm and let it go because I am in a foreign country, “their territory” is the phrase they used. This is just the tip of the iceberg on how I was treated by the university and how a
42 // DISCOURSE: THE POWER OF LANGUAGE AND COMMUNICATION.
