Article by Jennifer Chen-su Huang
Goo Goo Guide
May
Approaching two months in Tainan feels startling to me. I thought I had just arrived here. Today felt nice; the sky finally released its tears that it withheld for so long. The past few days were immensely heavy, the humidity coating my skin in a sheen of sweat. But the rain finally broke the heat and the air feels cool. Walking home, the gray clouds were welcoming.
As I prepare to submit a final presentation for Fulbright, I wonder what I have to show, what have I learned, and how can I contribute? How do I quantify this experience and prove to the taxpayer that their dollar is wellspent?
I feel so far from the answers and unsure of how to express myself. I feel a well of gratitude for this opportunity, to the miscellaneous encounters and the planned hosts who graciously received me. What can I give back to them to show them that I appreciate all the moments they spent with me? But I understand appreciation is limited. How can I make something of these moments -- commemorate them, because I know it is all happening so fast, and one day I will wish that I had done more.
But the present is all I have, and it would be ridiculous to worry about future regret it seems. While pressing woven cloth into clay this morning, I was listening to the author Alex Wagner talk about her new book, Futureface. Growing up as a mixed race woman, she discusses diving into her ancestry to try to make sense of her identity, but her conclusion is that identity is formed in the present, that you choose your identity, that it is formed by your community, by “the men and the women who touch our daily lives.”
I like this sentiment. In Taiwan, I am often encouraged to consult governmental records to trace my Pingpu lineage on my grandfather’s mother’s side, and while interesting, it hasn’t felt like a priority to me. Perhaps because proving my indigenous blood seems unimportant. As a second-generation American, I am already far removed from any indigenous heritage. My research is already contentious. As an outsider, what do have I to offer to Sayun Yuraw, my teacher, who shared with me the weaving traditions of her foremothers? In exchange for lessons, she asked me to tutor her grandchildren in English. Thus, all I have is my English-speaking ability and the hopes of providing to her grandchildren the same privileges I’ve been granted as an American and an English speaker. And if afforded the opportunity, would they want this -- to move to America and raise children as detached and displaced as me?
I am being naive -- the chance to attain financial prosperity abroad is worth it -- but is it really? What have my parents exchanged for their chance at the mythical American dream? There is a language discrepancy that lingers in our relationship, and I wish that the divide wasn’t so stark. And while I can speak Taiwanese and now Mandarin conversationally, it is not the language I was educated in, and I feel how English shapes me, limits me, orients me. In the library, my access is constrained to a Western-centric view of the world, and I know my research is incomplete and fragmentary because of this.
But I can still attempt translation. In a recent segment on NPR, the poet and literary translator Aaron Coleman calls translation a transformation, or more specifically, “a creative, productive failure.” What I like about this description is the recognition of what is both lost and gained through translation. I see translation as the process which allows one to understand and to be understood, even if only in incomplete fragments.
I wonder if the sentiment felt by the Atayal women while weaving could be experienced through textile, if cloth could be a medium for empathy. Since my arrival in Tainan, I have been considering how I will use what I have learned about Atayal weaving to create a new body of work. Not being Atayal, I was hesitant of appropriating the imagery I had learned, but I wanted to remember the technique -- what felt most important was to hold onto that embodied knowledge passed on to me. My intention is to preserve this ancient craft in my body rather than through my mouth. So I’ve started to collect quotes from Atayal weavers about their craft and asked Sayun Yuraw, my weaving teacher, to share with me the impetus of her work. In the statements, I am finding a kind collective and individual comfort, purpose, and identity in weaving. For example:
“Our ancestors provided motherly grace to us… I too will pass down the heritage by continuing weaving.” -- Siwa Yummin
“After my thirtieth birthday, I strongly realized that I am a woman… both as part of a collective identity and an individual.” -- Gieh-Wen Lin
“I like weaving because it reminds me of my mother and makes me feel immersed in the good feelings of my childhood and the kind of warm security my mother felt when weaving. Perhaps it’s my mother’s love that was passed on to me, that I weave.” -- Sayun Yuraw
I am translating text likes these into textile by weaving on the indigenous backstrap loom. Using the traditional pick-up technique that my teacher told me was popular among the tribes in Nan’ao, I am starting off with a colored alphabet in the warp and picking up each letter as it appears in the sentence. The weaving becomes a swath of rainbow. “Crossing the Rainbow Bridge” is a phrase used by the Atayal to represent the passage into heaven after death, which in the past, was secured by perfecting the skill of weaving. In my interactions with Atayal weavers, I am seeing weaving expressed as the means rather than the price of transcendence. Ideally all my sources would be shown with the finished cloth. My idea isn't to keep the words I am weaving a secret, but to let them be experienced in a different form, to let the words be felt rather than just conceptually processed. The translation here experiences a few transformations, first from Mandarin into English, and then from English into woven ramie and cotton.
While the warp on each of these woven quotes remains the same, the picked-up segments in the weft create a variegated pattern. I think of the act of weaving, the repetitive motions, the rhythm of the batten -- there is a kind of ritual and bodily engagement to this.
Susan Stewart in Poetry and the Fate of the Senses writes, “What is this pleasure or obsession that makes us want to touch a pattern? The pleasure of trailing a stick along a fence, running a finger along a wall of rough bricks and smooth pointing, drawing a splayed hand across a swath of corduroy?” I think it is answered by Jean Genet, when he says, “Ritual itself is… the recognition of transcendence, it’s the repetitive recognition of this transcendence, day after day, week after week, month after month…” I think here lies a partial explanation of why we continue to uphold this ancient craft, to experience that transcendence, to feel ourselves a part of something larger than we as individuals are. There is clearly a comfort or pleasure to feeling a sense of belonging.
As I prepare to submit a final presentation for Fulbright, I wonder what I have to show, what have I learned, and how can I contribute? How do I quantify this experience and prove to the taxpayer that their dollar is wellspent?
I feel so far from the answers and unsure of how to express myself. I feel a well of gratitude for this opportunity, to the miscellaneous encounters and the planned hosts who graciously received me. What can I give back to them to show them that I appreciate all the moments they spent with me? But I understand appreciation is limited. How can I make something of these moments -- commemorate them, because I know it is all happening so fast, and one day I will wish that I had done more.
But the present is all I have, and it would be ridiculous to worry about future regret it seems. While pressing woven cloth into clay this morning, I was listening to the author Alex Wagner talk about her new book, Futureface. Growing up as a mixed race woman, she discusses diving into her ancestry to try to make sense of her identity, but her conclusion is that identity is formed in the present, that you choose your identity, that it is formed by your community, by “the men and the women who touch our daily lives.”
I like this sentiment. In Taiwan, I am often encouraged to consult governmental records to trace my Pingpu lineage on my grandfather’s mother’s side, and while interesting, it hasn’t felt like a priority to me. Perhaps because proving my indigenous blood seems unimportant. As a second-generation American, I am already far removed from any indigenous heritage. My research is already contentious. As an outsider, what do have I to offer to Sayun Yuraw, my teacher, who shared with me the weaving traditions of her foremothers? In exchange for lessons, she asked me to tutor her grandchildren in English. Thus, all I have is my English-speaking ability and the hopes of providing to her grandchildren the same privileges I’ve been granted as an American and an English speaker. And if afforded the opportunity, would they want this -- to move to America and raise children as detached and displaced as me?
I am being naive -- the chance to attain financial prosperity abroad is worth it -- but is it really? What have my parents exchanged for their chance at the mythical American dream? There is a language discrepancy that lingers in our relationship, and I wish that the divide wasn’t so stark. And while I can speak Taiwanese and now Mandarin conversationally, it is not the language I was educated in, and I feel how English shapes me, limits me, orients me. In the library, my access is constrained to a Western-centric view of the world, and I know my research is incomplete and fragmentary because of this.
But I can still attempt translation. In a recent segment on NPR, the poet and literary translator Aaron Coleman calls translation a transformation, or more specifically, “a creative, productive failure.” What I like about this description is the recognition of what is both lost and gained through translation. I see translation as the process which allows one to understand and to be understood, even if only in incomplete fragments.
I wonder if the sentiment felt by the Atayal women while weaving could be experienced through textile, if cloth could be a medium for empathy. Since my arrival in Tainan, I have been considering how I will use what I have learned about Atayal weaving to create a new body of work. Not being Atayal, I was hesitant of appropriating the imagery I had learned, but I wanted to remember the technique -- what felt most important was to hold onto that embodied knowledge passed on to me. My intention is to preserve this ancient craft in my body rather than through my mouth. So I’ve started to collect quotes from Atayal weavers about their craft and asked Sayun Yuraw, my weaving teacher, to share with me the impetus of her work. In the statements, I am finding a kind collective and individual comfort, purpose, and identity in weaving. For example:
“Our ancestors provided motherly grace to us… I too will pass down the heritage by continuing weaving.” -- Siwa Yummin
“After my thirtieth birthday, I strongly realized that I am a woman… both as part of a collective identity and an individual.” -- Gieh-Wen Lin
“I like weaving because it reminds me of my mother and makes me feel immersed in the good feelings of my childhood and the kind of warm security my mother felt when weaving. Perhaps it’s my mother’s love that was passed on to me, that I weave.” -- Sayun Yuraw
I am translating text likes these into textile by weaving on the indigenous backstrap loom. Using the traditional pick-up technique that my teacher told me was popular among the tribes in Nan’ao, I am starting off with a colored alphabet in the warp and picking up each letter as it appears in the sentence. The weaving becomes a swath of rainbow. “Crossing the Rainbow Bridge” is a phrase used by the Atayal to represent the passage into heaven after death, which in the past, was secured by perfecting the skill of weaving. In my interactions with Atayal weavers, I am seeing weaving expressed as the means rather than the price of transcendence. Ideally all my sources would be shown with the finished cloth. My idea isn't to keep the words I am weaving a secret, but to let them be experienced in a different form, to let the words be felt rather than just conceptually processed. The translation here experiences a few transformations, first from Mandarin into English, and then from English into woven ramie and cotton.
While the warp on each of these woven quotes remains the same, the picked-up segments in the weft create a variegated pattern. I think of the act of weaving, the repetitive motions, the rhythm of the batten -- there is a kind of ritual and bodily engagement to this.
Susan Stewart in Poetry and the Fate of the Senses writes, “What is this pleasure or obsession that makes us want to touch a pattern? The pleasure of trailing a stick along a fence, running a finger along a wall of rough bricks and smooth pointing, drawing a splayed hand across a swath of corduroy?” I think it is answered by Jean Genet, when he says, “Ritual itself is… the recognition of transcendence, it’s the repetitive recognition of this transcendence, day after day, week after week, month after month…” I think here lies a partial explanation of why we continue to uphold this ancient craft, to experience that transcendence, to feel ourselves a part of something larger than we as individuals are. There is clearly a comfort or pleasure to feeling a sense of belonging.
Translating the words of weavers into textile.
Makeshift indigenous warping board made by flipping over a table.
Decomposing bamboo leaf beginning to look similar to my coded weaving.
Detail of the translated weaving.
Birdwatching in Meinong.