The dis-pronounced
Sine waves.
I should have forgiven his insularity, so I could win. After all, he has the right to be stupid and rude—he’s a man and an American White. He is entitled to his ignorance with impunity. This is a very White privilege. Why hadn’t I not thought about this? My triumph is that of civility and recollectedness. I thought to myself.
But whom am I rivaling? Surely, he is too despicable to even qualify as my competitor. I know this. But is there anyone else?
My fleeting sense of superiority does not last long enough to restore my self-esteem before embarrassment sets in. Imagine I’ve traveled from Los Angeles to Anchorage, all set for an adventurous spring break, only to have the customs officer at the airport, holding my passport, say to me, 'What a funny name.' I subtly rolled my eyes, unsure if the officer even noticed it yet not daring to make it any more obvious, while still maintaining a restrained smirk. A smirk is a token of your compliance with social norms and a signal of harmlessness. It is something that marks your membership in the world of courtesy. You show with a smirk that you are willing to play with their rules. Yet the fact that it’s a grudging smirk rather than a wholehearted smile hints at the hidden defiance and unruliness. I also believed—perhaps cowardly, and somewhat to my shame—in the Chinese proverb "shenshou bu da xiaolian ren" (one would not raise a hand to strike a smiling face), as if not playing by the rules would invite trouble.
Frankly, I wasn’t dumbfounded because I’ve somehow come to accept that rudeness and, dare I say, racism, as an unfortunate reality. Wronged I did feel, yet not knowing what to do at the moment, I played along with the game of “cool people don’t take that so seriously.” And I continued to exhibit the agreeableness that I knew was expected from people like me - someone who doesn’t appear particularly sophisticated, a college student, and, though I hate to admit it, a young Asian female. I was furious, but I kept it hidden.
Reverse racism. I came up with this more to restore my self-esteem than to deal with the aggression. What I viewed as restraint, if not cowardice, I turned to see as common sense and imperturbability, rooted in a relentlessly practiced civility. And I came to believe that this civility could never be sincerely embraced by a society built on predatory traditions—one that often attributes the predicament of one entire race to laziness, moral failure, or resignation. Neither could this civility be fully understood by the opposite gender, which for millennia has taken the compliance of women for granted. Resentful I might be, salty I might be, unjust I might be, but I was not completely incorrect.
Realizing how absurd my reverse racism was, I quickly became embarrassed by the thought that my civility prevailed over the ignorance often associated with the stereotypical American White male. The idea that I possessed civility while others did not felt as arrogant and misguided as the racism I encountered. Despite this awareness, I still changed my name on every app I used—Uber, Lyft, Uber Eats, and others—from Tongtong to Tia. The resentment seemed to resolve itself into resignation. I just wanted to avoid the dis-pronunciations.
Yes, I call it dis-pronunciation, not mispronunciation. It is “dis” because it is an active, conscious design rather than a natural slip of the tongue or because of the language barrier. People know it, and they can tell it. The college roommate who repeated “TUNG TUNG!” multiple times on the phone to hear giggles coming from the other end dis-pronounced. The Uber driver who asked if that was my real name and couldn’t help chuckling dis-pronounced. The Korean driver who made sure to let me know that “tong-tong” means chubby in Korean dis-pronounced. The barbecue restaurant waiter who immediately looked at his tongs upon hearing my name, making me notice and holding back a laugh, also dis-pronounced, though he said nothing.
A dis-pronunciation is an act of denial, disrespect, and ill-intentioned jocosity. It is based on the clear awareness that you are the right and safe target for teasing. Right in that you are an Asian with an unintelligible and hilarious name—to a monolingual English speaker. Safe in that you are a female necessarily, as they assumed, incapable of and not wanting to offense. Beneath the dis-pronunciation lies a latent reluctance to show respect, a fear of appearing too foreign by pronouncing an “exotic” name correctly, and an instant boost to one’s ego as a cultural insider when confronted with that name.
The tricky part of being dis-pronounced is that it often comes across as an unconscious mispronunciation. So the malice that is blatant in “Ching Chong” becomes subtle in “Tung Tung.” It also becomes a private experience through “Tung Tung” because it is specifically directed at you, built on some knowledge about you, and intended for you alone to perceive. This is when your feelings of disgust, embarrassment, fury, and shame seem irrational, unwarranted, and untellable.
Standing at the intersection of identities and on the boundary of languages, there are a lot of “dis-es” and “mis-es” for me to navigate. I often have to either stick to or give up part of myself with much tenacity and resolution, or even conjure up some personae—like Tia—about which I have to spend extra time explaining to those who truly know me and can pronounce “Tongtong” right. I can envision the many more dis-pronunciations that I will certainly encounter in the future, as well as all the feelings of embarrassment and resentment that I will have to grapple with. Yet beyond stereotypes and frustrations is the reality and the subjectivity of a 彤彤. The “dis” is just a prefix.
Zhang Tongtong
