A Short Essay on Being by Jenny Boully

The title: Just like the words in it, the title implies just that. The work is a short essay. The title describes the content of the story as the things an individual may go through in the state of who they are. The author, being of mixed races such as a white American, Thai and even having Taiwanese genes in her, often has to identify her Nationality to most of the people she meets. The author explains that when the people she meets around the different parts of the world asks who she is regarding Nationality, they mean to ask what her race is. The appropriateness of the title is that it insinuates the state of belonging which is extensively expounded in this text.

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The Author: Jenny Boully has authored several literary works such as The Book of Beginnings and Endings, The Body: An essay among literally works. Her works have been published in several literary magazines such as the Boston Review, Conjunctions, and Puerto del Sol among others. She says that she believes in love which is her shared element across most of her books. Most of her work, however, is fictional. (BOULLY, 2016).

Genre: The work is a short story.

The essay is about the author's identity in terms of race and Nationality. It is narrated in first person.

The story assumes an interesting angle as the narrator is also the author, talking about her experiences and giving firsthand information about her experiences with her Nationality, race and general identity. She talks about her own experiences about food especially the Thai pad. She talks about how being a Thai and being taken for a Mexican at times is annoying to her at times. She narrates her ordeal whereby at one time she went to a Thai food store to shop with her husband, the owner of the store recognized her as a Thai and she wonders why.

Here, the food symbolizes privilege. This is displayed by the transition that Jenny undergoes from eating som-tom which is a folk food to taking high price food. This symbolizes change of identity or being in the narrator.

The author wants to explain and rectify the common stereotypes that most people often associate with her culture. She attempts to give Thai Culture the dignity it deserves (Maxwell, 2017).

She puts it that her being is a quiet one, typical of Thai people but it is a barrier in her progress as she has to spend a lot of time dealing with stereotypical thoughts and beliefs about her being from other people. Interestingly, she does not beg to differ with those thoughts and comments but instead just says Thank you.

Jenny Boully's being is underrated and undermined by assumptions from others, based on her nationality other than her beliefs and character.

References

BOULLY, J. (2016). Love Lesson. Mississippi Review, 43(3), 93-96.

Maxwell, K. (2017). From nobody to some bodies: forms of mourning and melancholia in Jenny Boully's The Body and [one love affair]. Textual Practice, 1-19.