Through the class reading of the vignette “My Name” from *The House on Mango Street*, I shared the same troubles as the protagonist, Esperanza. I remember when I first moved from a rural village in China to New York for middle school, I couldn’t read a single word in English on my first day. When people asked for my name, I instinctively told them the Chinese pronunciation, and almost no one could say it correctly. Therefore, like other Asian kids, I ended up adopting an easy-to-pronounce English nickname, “Tom,” which I still use. However, like Esperanza, we both prefer that others accurately pronounce our names, rather than altering them just to make it easier for others to remember.
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One thought on “Week 14 YeFang”
Hello Ye, thank you for sharing this with us. After reading your discussion post I thought it was so crazy we have to change ourself for the convenience of others and I’m incredibly guilty of that.
Your willingness to adopt an English name, “Tom,” reflects a form of self-sacrifice, where you chose to make things easier for others at the expense of your own cultural and linguistic identity. I know this might be an unnecessarily deep way of thinking about the situation but I feel like even the things we think are small are harmful in the long term.