Globe and Mail writer Wency Leung, photographed on June 24, 2020.Fred Lum/The Globe and Mail
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Speak up, my grandmother demanded. Speak up! Or one day, you’ll no longer know how.
My paternal grandmother, a commanding matriarch, was exasperated with the reserved, awkward school-aged version of me, who reluctantly mumbled one-word answers in response to her questions. Back then, I dismissed her threat as absurd. Today, I see it as prophetic. Because even now, as a middle-aged woman with a great deal more confidence, I feel hesitant to use my own voice.
One of the main reasons I became a reporter was to bring attention to those who are seldom heard. My body of work is a collection of other people’s stories. With strategic questions and quiet listening, I can serve as a conduit for their grief, rage, fear or wonder. Sometimes, though, it’s a struggle to keep my own feelings securely tucked away.
Recently, when the mother of a young boy with cancer told me how she tried to comfort and prepare him to face death, I narrowly avoided breaking down into sobs. I suppressed the flow of tears until I could be alone. Many years ago, when a man from Jamaica described to me the appalling living and working conditions he endured in Ontario as a temporary foreign worker at a vegetable greenhouse, I swallowed my horror and focused on taking notes. His plea, “Can you help me?” rings in my ears when I now read about the spread of COVID-19 among those who produce the food we eat.
But while I have often admired and been grateful for the candor of the individuals I’ve interviewed, I didn’t fully appreciate how terrifying it can be to share one’s story until I told mine.
Last month, The Globe and Mail published my most personal piece yet, revealing how I became a kidney donor and my very private thoughts about the complexities of giving. The moment I filed my first draft to my editors, I wanted to simultaneously throw up, scrub myself down in the shower, burn my laptop and chew off all my fingernails. I felt exposed.
“Treat yourself like a hostile interviewee,” a former editor told me when I sought his advice on personal essay-writing, meaning I’d need to be as brutally honest about myself as I would about anyone else, and not let my ego or discomfort stand in the way of writing truthfully. “Write this thing as though you’re going to burn it in the fireplace when it’s done.”
Only I didn’t burn it. I sent it off for publication. And without exaggeration, doing so was one of the scariest things I’ve ever done.
In journalism school, I learned to avoid using the word “I,” that reporters should cover the story, not be the story, and that first-person story-telling is a lazy approach. These lessons have been proved wrong time and again, especially by my talented colleagues like Dakshana Bascaramurty, who has written about what it’s like for children of immigrants to discover their parents’ homeland and seek out connections with their past, Ann Hui, who took a deep dive into the history of Chinese restaurants in Canada and that of her own family in her book Chop Suey Nation, Robyn Doolittle, who reflected on her own complex feelings about the #MeToo movement in her book Had It Coming, and Kathryn Blaze Baum, who revealed how debilitating it can be to have a “mild concussion” – just to name a few. All are powerhouse news reporters who have skillfully traversed into personal journalism and back. By treating themselves as hostile interviewees, they have delivered far more intimate and authoritative insights on certain subjects than they would have as impartial observers.
Still, some lessons – whether acquired through school, through workplaces, through family or society in general – embed themselves deeply and are hard to unlearn. By training myself to scrub my reporting of my own views, I also developed certain doubts: Do I have something meaningful to say? Will anyone be interested in my story? Will anyone care? Does my voice matter?
To tell your own story is to open yourself up to scrutiny and criticism, or – arguably more painful – to apathetic silence. I have been extremely privileged to have editors, colleagues and mentors who have helped coax me out of my comfort zone. As I spilled my guts out for all to see, it was uplifting to have the support of individuals who saw value in what I had to say and gave me the space in which to say it. And so I think a lot about those who are not as fortunate. Those who are marginalized or oppressed, who are rarely asked for their views, who are chronically overlooked and undervalued.
After all these years, I’m still testing out my voice and learning how to speak up. In doing so, I’ve come to recognize just how important it is to do my part in making sure others can speak up too.
What else we’re thinking about:
At a time when systemic and interpersonal racism is under the microscope, this essay by Christine Miskonoodinkwe Smith, published by the website Heathy Debate, reveals just how damaging it is and how far Canada has to go to right historic and present wrongs. Miskonoodinkwe Smith, who is from Peguis First Nation, writes of her experience as a survivor of the Sixties Scoop, the decades-long mass forced separation of Indigenous children from their families into the Canadian child welfare system. Delivering heartbreaking details, she opens up about the painful and lasting consequences of treating people not only as though they don’t matter, but as though they are unwanted. And she demonstrates the enormous strength it takes to try to reclaim some of what was taken from her.
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