Finding My Voice

A Hero's Journey Inspired by The Good Earth

I teach a World Literature class to high schoolers, and one of our books this year was The Good Earth, by Pearl S. Buck. (Our first discussion is about why we’re reading a book about China by a white American woman. I suggest reading the book before deciding that question.) But I digress…

In the class my students write a personal essay in which they draw connections between the hero’s journey of a fictional character and their own. Whenever I give a writing assignment, I try to complete the assignment as if I were a student. I give myself a short time limit, don’t do a lot of polishing, and in this case, limited my journey to pre-college. Of all the writing they do in the year, this essay is my favorite to read because of their insight into the characters they explore and their own journey.

This is my own version of this part-academic, part-memoirish essay (contains Good Earth spoilers):

Silence may be golden, as the proverb goes, but even silence can be a burden if it is never broken. In Pearl S. Buck’s The Good Earth, the character O-lan is silent for most of the book, breaking her silence only when pressed. In the same way O-lan found her voice, so I found mine when reading opened up a world of ideas that compelled me to speak.

When O-lan entered the story, her arrival was much anticipated, but she herself was somewhat disappointing—“a square, honest face…. habitually silent and unspeaking.” I entered my family in a similar way. I was supposed to be a boy—my parents already had two daughters—but I proved to be a Jennifer instead of a Jeffrey. I accepted my place as the third girl, recipient of hand-me-downs and instructions, someone to be toted around by my take-charge, 8-year-old sister. And when our family of girls was bookended by a fourth sister, one who loved to talk, my silence became even more pronounced. There were plenty of words swirling around our home, and I was happy to lose myself in a large stack of books. Just as O-lan contented herself with silence, so did I.

O-lan’s initiation occurred during the famine that caused her family to flee south in search of food. An attempted theft by desperate neighbors called her out of her silence, and her boldness prevented them from taking everything. She did the same when Wang Lung’s uncle tried to seize some land. Soon after, when her family relocated to the city, she resourcefully housed, clothed, and fed them, while interpreting the culture for her naïve husband. Her dogged determination to provide for her family became, in effect, her voice: she expressed herself by anticipating and meeting her family’s needs.

My own initiation came after a childhood spent trying to mimic my older sisters at piano playing, baking, games, and sewing. But everything changed when I decided to imitate my bookish sister by checking out the largest book I could find at the library, Gone with the Wind. I snuck it home, devoured it, and suddenly, my life was filled with books that could satisfy my voracious need to explore new worlds.

Books became even more of a solace when my father died of a sudden heart attack just as I was about to enter high school. I needed a way to process what I was feeling and thinking, and writing became a form of therapy. I kept a diary. I wrote stories on my father’s electric typewriter. I wrote scripts for group projects and poems for the school literary magazine. I adored essay tests. My friends and teachers began to think of me as a writer, and that success gave me confidence to speak out in other ways. I was still quiet, and I could still fly under the radar, but I did so less and less as my desire to explore ideas overrode my self-editing.

In 11^th grade, I took creative writing with a quirky teacher who had a rose tattoo and a law degree and wore long, swishy skirts. I loved her. She entered one of my stories in a national contest and I won. I had to read the story aloud in front of an audience and two famous authors, which almost scared me to death. Yet somehow I summoned the courage, just as O-lan had, and my voice came forth when I most needed it.

The second half of The Good Earth proves the adage, “you can’t go home again.” Wang Lung and O-lan tried to return to their simple farm life, but they had changed too much, transformed by land and treasure. Only when O-lan was on her deathbed did Wang Lung finally prove that he cared for her, even with her “big” feet, plain looks, and perpetual silence. In the same way, I too came to realize that my friends and teachers liked quiet people too—that there was a place for a reserved introvert who hung back and observed and sought words for the human experience. Reading was the gateway that allowed me to find my voice, both spoken and written, and thus to connect more deeply with the people in my life.

On the surface, my hero’s journey and O-lan’s might seem very different. O-lan’s began silently, until she found her voice of courage and eventually gained the respect of her husband. In my hero’s journey, I too began silently but found a world of ideas in books that awakened my voice just when I most needed it. And like O-lan, although I will always prefer a quiet life, I will never again be without a voice.

Photo credit: Jay on Unsplash