Moises Park | Understanding Others Through Ourselves

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My Journey to #AchieveMore

Literature and visual narratives, films and photography, can be powerful ways to find humanity in those that are often considered different, distant, dangerous. As an Asian Latino, I strive to connect with students who have different backgrounds and upbringings. My biggest achievement is to invite them to find themselves in others, in discovering that humans share something that unite us all. We all suffer or have suffered, and we all need help at times. Teaching can also be healing. I grew up speaking Spanish in Chile with Korean immigrant parents. Sharing moments of self realization have always been what drives me to achieve more. I celebrate those moments in class that a piece of literature, a photograph, or a song can have the power to come closer to others, to the point that finding their humanity is natural, is no longer an exotic other. As somebody who has often lived as part of the other, I have connected with the works of art I study and teach. Students' realization through cultural products in Spanish or Portuguese that we share humanity and we all strive to connect with others and each other has always energized me. Students do not expect a Korean man teaching them Spanish but they also do not expect that narratives in a foreign language can be so intimate and so affective. Language and culture are very important parts of my discipline, but they mean nothing if we are not using those tools to flourish as human beings. In these divided times, I do not settle in finding partisan satisfaction, but the possibility that perhaps, we have lost our humanity in modern connectivity, and a story, in prose, in verses, in audiovisual, musical or photographic medium, or set in Chile, Nicaragua or Cuba, could reveal our own humanity. Meeting Mexican-American novelist Sandra Cisneros in front of my students who are reading her novel has immensely created an intimate community in my class that advocates for the need of humanity and civility, without the divisive nature of today's political atmosphere. Her charisma in person was already revealed in her narratives, and sharing those experiences with students motivates me to continue loving my vocation as a professor. Revealing to them that I am always a student of the written arts, just like them, creates a social bond, but also a commitment. We all fall into moments of deep pain, doubt, agony, and silence, and the arts can lift us from those moments into a community of empathy and solidarity, bridging ourselves to those that we once considered others, when so often we forget how close we should be.

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