Four years ago, I stood in the middle of Tiananmen Square, surrounded by a sea of tourists and sparse police officers.
As I roamed around, I glanced ahead at the painting of Mao Zedong high on the Tiananmen, the gate to the forbidden city. His face commanded over the square; his eyes appeared to follow me.
My mind wandered back to stories about the Tiananmen Square protests my father always told me about. On June 4, 1989, he was here fighting alongside fellow students for democracy, freedom of press and freedom of speech. As a curious fourteen-year-old, I yearned for these stories right then and there. With history embedded in the atmosphere, I wanted to seize the moment of standing on the ground where blood was sacrificed for the pursuit of democracy. Hence, my inquisitive nature took over.
“What was it like being here during the protests?”
Almost frantically, my father hushed me, whispering, “You can’t talk about that, not in a public place.”
Silence ensued.
In that moment, I felt stripped of my words and fundamental ability to express myself. Freedom of speech, which I had grown accustomed to perceiving as a right, not a privilege, was seized from my grasp. As I glanced back at the vigilant eyes of Mao, my naïve mind fumbled with this thought, shuddering at the idea of handing my intellect and judgement over to people with power.
Every time I think back to that moment, I can still feel the immense power of my words. If the truth is not so influential, so coveted and so difficult, then the Chinese government would not undergo such a strenuous effort to conceal it. The very feeling of having my words taken away from me has given value to them, stimulating my need to tell stories; the oppressive feeling of censorship makes the journey of seeking the truth become worthwhile and important. I believe the very least I can do is to fearlessly honor the power of my words in place of the people who can’t. This has guided my journalistic philosophy ever since. Half a world away, my search for the hidden narratives around me has turned observations into stories and questions into investigations.
Back in my community, I’ve become attuned to the stories that lie below the surface of simple observations. This is manifested through hearing a peer lament about being the only girl in the computer programming club, through noticing that the girl sitting beside you in class is wearing a safety pin after the divisive election, through feeling shocked that an alum of your school marched with white supremacists in Charlottesville. Emboldened by the vigor of conversations with those around me, telling the stories in this community has allowed me to localize issues beyond our sphere of recognition. Recognizing a situation that is a microcosm of a real-world issue has become an integral part of my journalistic intuition over time.
Good journalism inevitably elicits passionate reactions. Living in a community that is not very ethnically diverse and where economic privilege tends to create a bubble of complacency, I like to believe that our stories can challenge people’s inherent beliefs. If we can get readers to reconsider and question their own perspective after reading a story, then we’ve done our job. After the outpouring of sexual assault allegations against numerous powerful men in Hollywood, we created a sexual assault spread on this momentous movement. From an opinion editor’s editorial on the presence of sexual assault in our community to multiple columns from male teachers calling on guys to start talking, a spectrum of reactions were elicited. One guy took to Twitter to repudiate the content we put out, saying that we’re forgetting what makes high school great (sports games, musicals and the likes) and instead replacing it with political opinions, which is “wildly unfair” and “JUST WRONG!”
But that’s the point. Be surprised. Be upset. Be uncomfortable. The resulting outpouring of impassioned responses means our work allowed the reader to perceive ideas in ways they’re not accustomed to. Rather than staying enclosed in our suburban bubble, recharging our biased battery and staying silent, I push our boundaries of comfort through storytelling. Through incessant questioning, I challenge the ideas in my community. I can’t stay silent like I did in China. And so, I’ve discovered my role as a storyteller: discomfort the comforted. It’s the catalyst to making something happen to this world.
For me, words hold tremendous implications. They mold the collective conscience of communities, as well as forge the perceptions and convictions held by individual consumers. My right to words propels me to transcend their power to tell the stories concealed by crevices. Reporter’s notebook in one hand and pen in the other, I’m prepared to fight for mine, with the aim that they will one day echo in marginalized districts in need of reform, in classrooms begging for color in their curriculum, in systems and institutions necessitating investigations and most of all, in the mind of the individual who simply seeks to gain a better understanding about the world around her.
As I roamed around, I glanced ahead at the painting of Mao Zedong high on the Tiananmen, the gate to the forbidden city. His face commanded over the square; his eyes appeared to follow me.
My mind wandered back to stories about the Tiananmen Square protests my father always told me about. On June 4, 1989, he was here fighting alongside fellow students for democracy, freedom of press and freedom of speech. As a curious fourteen-year-old, I yearned for these stories right then and there. With history embedded in the atmosphere, I wanted to seize the moment of standing on the ground where blood was sacrificed for the pursuit of democracy. Hence, my inquisitive nature took over.
“What was it like being here during the protests?”
Almost frantically, my father hushed me, whispering, “You can’t talk about that, not in a public place.”
Silence ensued.
In that moment, I felt stripped of my words and fundamental ability to express myself. Freedom of speech, which I had grown accustomed to perceiving as a right, not a privilege, was seized from my grasp. As I glanced back at the vigilant eyes of Mao, my naïve mind fumbled with this thought, shuddering at the idea of handing my intellect and judgement over to people with power.
Every time I think back to that moment, I can still feel the immense power of my words. If the truth is not so influential, so coveted and so difficult, then the Chinese government would not undergo such a strenuous effort to conceal it. The very feeling of having my words taken away from me has given value to them, stimulating my need to tell stories; the oppressive feeling of censorship makes the journey of seeking the truth become worthwhile and important. I believe the very least I can do is to fearlessly honor the power of my words in place of the people who can’t. This has guided my journalistic philosophy ever since. Half a world away, my search for the hidden narratives around me has turned observations into stories and questions into investigations.
Back in my community, I’ve become attuned to the stories that lie below the surface of simple observations. This is manifested through hearing a peer lament about being the only girl in the computer programming club, through noticing that the girl sitting beside you in class is wearing a safety pin after the divisive election, through feeling shocked that an alum of your school marched with white supremacists in Charlottesville. Emboldened by the vigor of conversations with those around me, telling the stories in this community has allowed me to localize issues beyond our sphere of recognition. Recognizing a situation that is a microcosm of a real-world issue has become an integral part of my journalistic intuition over time.
Good journalism inevitably elicits passionate reactions. Living in a community that is not very ethnically diverse and where economic privilege tends to create a bubble of complacency, I like to believe that our stories can challenge people’s inherent beliefs. If we can get readers to reconsider and question their own perspective after reading a story, then we’ve done our job. After the outpouring of sexual assault allegations against numerous powerful men in Hollywood, we created a sexual assault spread on this momentous movement. From an opinion editor’s editorial on the presence of sexual assault in our community to multiple columns from male teachers calling on guys to start talking, a spectrum of reactions were elicited. One guy took to Twitter to repudiate the content we put out, saying that we’re forgetting what makes high school great (sports games, musicals and the likes) and instead replacing it with political opinions, which is “wildly unfair” and “JUST WRONG!”
But that’s the point. Be surprised. Be upset. Be uncomfortable. The resulting outpouring of impassioned responses means our work allowed the reader to perceive ideas in ways they’re not accustomed to. Rather than staying enclosed in our suburban bubble, recharging our biased battery and staying silent, I push our boundaries of comfort through storytelling. Through incessant questioning, I challenge the ideas in my community. I can’t stay silent like I did in China. And so, I’ve discovered my role as a storyteller: discomfort the comforted. It’s the catalyst to making something happen to this world.
For me, words hold tremendous implications. They mold the collective conscience of communities, as well as forge the perceptions and convictions held by individual consumers. My right to words propels me to transcend their power to tell the stories concealed by crevices. Reporter’s notebook in one hand and pen in the other, I’m prepared to fight for mine, with the aim that they will one day echo in marginalized districts in need of reform, in classrooms begging for color in their curriculum, in systems and institutions necessitating investigations and most of all, in the mind of the individual who simply seeks to gain a better understanding about the world around her.