A Short Essay On Being By Jennie Bully Analysis

One’s perspective of the World around them is shaped by their education, childhood, and their experiences. All of these factors culminate to form some sort of final opinion for the person; that encompassing opinion is the person’s thoughts on every country, every culture, and every country’s people. This opinion is often difficult to shift, as it has been formed under many years, and is the basis for many stereotypes, racial prejudices, and bigotry. Jenny Boully, a Thai-American author, confronts these topics in her essay titled “A Short Essay on Being” in the Triquarterly magazine. “A Short Essay on Being” illuminates the credulous American perspective of Asia by depicting Americans as ethnocentrists, who view the world around them in a simply American view and impose their own
The dish is referred by Boully as “Pot Thai”, as it is how she grew up pronouncing it in her Thai household. Her friends correct Boully over the pronunciation of a Thai dish, even knowing she is Thai, claiming it is “pad Thai”. Boully recalls a conversation with one of her friends, “I told her that I would visit and make her pot Thai. She told me, ‘It’s pad Thai.’ And even though she knew I was Thai and even though she knew that I was born in Thailand and had been back numerous times and even though she knew that my mother raised me to speak Thai and still spoke to me in Thai, I thanked her for correcting me.” (“A Short Essay on Being”) This interaction with her friend sums up the entire theme and goal of Boully’s essay. This woman, who knows her friend is Thai and grew up with the dish, still corrects her. It is not clear if this woman has been to Thailand, but if she hasn’t, then she is being the literal definition of ethnocentrism. She is only using her American perspective to say that a Thai woman does not know how to pronounce a Thai