The Power of the Pen
Ngan T. Nguyen, Oxfam America's Southeast Asia Program Coordinator, re-examines the power of literacy during a trip home to Vietnam.
Last summer, I joined Oxfam America as the Southeast Asia program coordinator thrilled to be working at an organization with a philosophy and mission that reinforce my long-held belief that the fight against poverty and injustice can gradually be won through the empowerment of the very people carrying out this fight on a daily basis. Women in particular have had to endure this struggle from generation to generation -- and continue to do so. From more than 25 years of practical experience in gender equity through the empowerment of women, Oxfam America recognizes this reality -- a reality that first came to me seven years ago when I visited a small village in West Africa.
As part of a research project, I worked with Gambian women tending a vegetable garden. A small classroom stood in the center of this garden, which served as the venue for women to come together three times a week to learn how to read and write. One day, I encountered a woman sitting under a tree with a pen and a torn piece of paper on her lap. She suddenly grabbed my hands and pulled me to the ground next to her. Leaning over and grasping her pen, she said to me in English, "Look carefully." With her gaze fixed on the paper, she nervously pressed the pen onto it and started forming one letter, then two, three, four and finally five. "Istra," she loudly and proudly announced. Istra had written her name for the first time, and I was the honored guest to witness this special moment in her life. It became a special moment in my life, too; I still cannot forget her trembling hands when she started writing, the bliss that came over her face when she finished writing her name and then reading it, as if she had just been born and came into full existence at that moment.
But it was not until I went home to Vietnam for the first time that I fully understood the power of literacy.
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My grandmother is illiterate. She was never given the opportunity to study. She felt vulnerable. She was vulnerable -- to her society's traditional view of women as wives, mothers and home managers; to the bombardment of verbal and physical abuse by her husband and his family; to a lifetime of servitude and drudgery, robbing her of her self-esteem and respect. Day in and day out, she'd shoulder the responsibilities of cooking, cleaning, child-rearing, fetching water and firewood, hoeing, planting, pig- and fowl-raising and so forth. She saw daylight, but she was kept in the dark. A violent darkness. But even in this darkness she saw a glimpse of light, a shadow of hope, which came in the form of her daughter.
Over the years, she made sure that her daughter would see and live in the light she so desperately sought and would not have to endure her silent and solitary suffering. Her sufferings were such because she had no medium with which to express herself and release her frustration. Except on occasions when she could no longer hold her anger, the poor pigs and chickens she fed were the targets of her outbursts. She knew that without education, she was powerless to carry out any resistance that could change the course of her miserable life. Apart from her livestock, who would listen to her?
So. She knew what she had to do. Her daughter must be educated; her daughter must learn how to read and write; more importantly, her daughter must know and respect the power of the written word. At all costs and against all odds, she single-handedly put her daughter through school. Little did she know that, years later, all her efforts would pay off, for not only her daughter, but for her daughter's daughter as well.
Growing up, my mother had always advised me to keep diaries; every Tet, birthday and Christmas, she'd make sure my shelves were fully stocked with empty pages that awaited the shape of my letter, the color of my ink and the meaning of my words. She'd insist on their usefulness and vaguely allude to their importance, but she didn't live long enough to explain what she really meant, especially when she spoke of their power potential.
In all my writing, I never failed to mention my desire to "return to my roots," always romanticizing that I'd discover something hidden that would forever inextricably bind the past, present and future generations of my family.
On the 22nd of October, 1992, the entry of my diary read, "At long last. Vietnam." When the excitement surrounding my homecoming subsided, my grandmother and I started recounting anecdotes about our missing link: my mother and her daughter. We sat under mosquito netting and felt the presence of not two but three generations, linked by the "hidden something" I had hoped to find: my mother's diaries written before she left Vietnam.
In Long An, most of my waking hours were spent writing down my own thoughts about reading, deciphering and memorizing the prose of a woman who agonizingly submitted to and later liberated herself from the webs of Confucian patriarchal customs, superstitions and religious beliefs that defined the parameters of her dreams and actions. I wrote about how she was trained to believe that drinking a bottle of beer every day of her pregnancy would make her child of lighter skin and thus more beautiful, and that in order to survive the aftermath of giving birth she must eat only white rice with salty foods, sleep on heated surfaces in 90-degree Fahrenheit weather and abstain from washing her hair and teeth for one or two months. These taboos are still prevalent. I also wrote about how this woman served her in-laws and was abused by them for pursuing her career.
All the while I carried out my research on women's strengths, I heard echoes of my mother's words -- the words of a woman who ultimately chose positive values to characterize herself, interpreted her reality, raised questions, took action to overcome her obstacles and continued to ask new questions. They were the words of a woman who underwent the process of empowerment through the power of a pen and of her consciousness.
In my work, I see that for many women worldwide, the ability to read, write and then read again what one has written is a powerful tool for attaining a strong sense of self-worth and identity. This realization of one's strengths is an essential component of empowerment.
As I reread the pages of my diary with renewed clarity and continue to express my inner-most thoughts in it daily, I am able to locate the development of my strengths -- and weaknesses. As I fill up the pages of my diary, I write for the empowerment of generations after me. Even more important, I write for my own empowerment, aspiring to new challenges in a world that is now beginning to recognize the value of women's leadership.
-Ngan T. Nguyen is Oxfam America's Southeast Asia Program Coordinator.