During the project, I asked myself on multiple occasions: Am I doing this right? Am I being respectful enough? Yet my child never seemed bothered by such questions; he only knew how to act. His ebullience for learning the stories and drawing the images never failed our family’s project.
I drew inspiration from his quiet study of figures and his diligent renderings, and suddenly found our roles reversed: I was not the creator nurturing my creation; he was the author, and I was his apprentice.
In outlining his drawings, I revisited the free-flow of his hands across the paper.
By painting his blank spaces, I brought colour to his design.
We may have been learning about our Chinese identity, but he demonstrated total agency over his art, leading the way for us to create something together.
[...]
I refuse to allow my child to forget where we really came from because to do so enables England to forget what she did. I resist my forced membership into an English-speaking world that does not respect or is inclusive of my peoples.
Our acts of cultural reconnection are ones of colonial defiance.
My entire entry can be read here: http://bild-lida.ca/blog/uncategorized/welcome-to-the-chungle-reconnection-as-colonial-defiance-by-rhonda-chung/
Audio version: https://soundcloud.com/bild_lida/welcome-to-the-chungle-reconnection-as-colonial-defiance
BILD is a critical sociolinguistic blog started by members of McGill University's Department of Integrated Studies in Education with the goal of discussing our language experiences in the multilingual setting of Montreal.