Slammed Door: The Harmful Effect of Language Barriers in Appalachia

Language barriers are a common obstacle for people when moving to a different

country. However, moving to a predominantly Caucasian area such as West Virginia

with little to no people like you can make it more difficult. When people move to a foreign country, they feel alienated and lonely, so they try to find pieces within their new community that remind them of their home to feel less lonely. That is why many minorities concentrate in one area so they can feel attached to their home, leading to the formation of many places such as China Town and Little Tokyo. Because in places like those, people are able to relate and speak to the people surrounding them. Unfortunately for me, my mom did not decide to move to a place that was similar to my previous home. Instead, she chose to move to a small town in the middle of WV with few Asian faces in sight, completely alienating me from whatI have known as home.

Before, my home was a city in Germany with a vibrant Vietnamese community where

I perfectly fit in with everyone else. All of us were Vietnamese - German, born and raised with very similar lives. Living there, I was simply just another face, but moving to West Virginia completely changed that. There, in my small town, I stuck out like a sore thumb, feeling separated from everyone else. Suddenly, my comfortable sense of self was stripped away from me, and I no longer felt comfortable. It felt like I was an outsider of a community I did not belong to.

I was separated from them both in a physical and cultural way. Just like many other Asian kids growing up in a predominantly white area, they experience much discrimination for the way they look and what they eat, and I was just another victim of that. In response to that, many Asian kids try to assimilate themselves into their white community to fit in and stray away from their Asian culture in hopes to escape persecution. However, in my case, this was an impossible task to complete. Even if I could ask my mom to stop packing me lunch with pungent fish sauce, my strong accent would already distaste people’s interest in me before I could even open my lunch box.

Since I was born speaking Vietnamese and German, I knew little to no English when

moving to West Virginia. Speaking to others became a nightmare for me, afraid that

people wouldn't understand me. Because they didn’t. I was unable to properly communicate with the kids on the playground. I was unable to communicate my

problems to my teachers, and my teachers were unable to respond to my needs. All

the thoughts that were in my head that I wanted to express to others were suppressed in the back of my head, knowing that no one would understand me. Being unable to use the correct words to express myself made me feel invisible and silenced. I did not understand them, and they did not understand me. I would sit in my 5th grade classroom surrounded by a bunch of people with noises coming out of their mouths, unable to understand a word. It felt like being completely isolated in a room with just noise around me. So there I just sat all alone in class with no one around me except arcane noises coming from faces I did not know.

Language barriers are nothing new and have been around since humans created languages. However, in some cases, language barriers can lead to linguistic racism, discrimination towards people based on their use of language. This can lead to people struggling with finding careers as they are undermined and devalued due to their accents. This parallels the rise and fall of actor Sessue Hayakawa.

Sessue Hayakawa was born on June 10th, 1886 in Japan and later moved to the

States where he became a prominent silent film actor during the 1910s, starring in

many movies such as The Typhoon, The Wrath of the Gods and The Sacrifice, and

The Cheat. During his prime, in the late 1910s, he earned around $4,000 a week.

However, his career started to slump in the 20s and really plummeted in the early 30s, after he starred in Daughter of the Dragon. This was a bad turn for Hayakawa because during the late 20s and early 30s began the era of talkies, films with synchronized sound. And due to his heavy accent, Hayakawa’s performance in Daughter of the Dragon was not well perceived at the time. This led him to return to Japan and France to make films. His film career continued until 1966, when he starred in his last movie, The Daydreamer. Eventually, Hayakawa passed away in 1973 at the age of 87. After his death, his legacy remained as the first international Asian movie star.

Sessue Hayakawa in an advertisement for the movie His Debt [Source: Pacific Citizen]

Although Hayakawa's struggles were in the 1930s, to this day, many Asians and

other ethnic minorities still face discrimination due to their accents. This can still be

vividly seen in many areas around Appalachia. In many areas, immigrants with

heavy accents and broken English get ostracized and criticized, being told to “learn

the language” while working hard to provide a better life for their children. So ranging

from feeling silenced in a classroom to having a stunned career, linguistic barriers

and racism can cause minorities to be devalued, isolated, and mistreated. While many immigrants may not be able to fully capture the English language, their wisdom and knowledge are not to be misunderstood. Therefore, it is important to stop ignorance and discrimination against people who don’t speak with a perfect accent and rather embrace their differences into our Appalachian region to create a more inclusive and diverse community, especially with the growing emphasis on multilinguism among the world.

Mary Nguyen