Beyond the Surface: Empathy, Identity, and Storytelling

By Teresa Xu

"Words can be a lifeline."

Beyond the Surface: Empathy, Identity, and Storytelling is a contemplative memoir of a young woman who realized how little she understood people and used creative writing, storytelling, and other media to change that.

Accomplished essayist Teresa Xu shares p

• Language: English
• Publisher: New Degree Press
• Release date: Aug 25, 2021
• ISBN: 9781637305508

Book preview

Beyond the Surface

Empathy, Identity, and Storytelling

Teresa Xu

new degree press

copyright © 2021 Teresa Xu

All rights reserved.

Beyond the Surface

Empathy, Identity, and Storytelling

ISBN

978-1-63730-446-4 Paperback

978-1-63730-549-2 Kindle Ebook

978-1-63730-550-8 Digital Ebook

To my paternal grandmother, who I met only once but who had always been an inspiration to me. You wrote a whole history book about Napoleon, and while I’ve never actually read it, it probably inspired me to follow in your footsteps. You didn’t live to one hundred, after all, but your legacy remains.

To my maternal grandpa who raised me, accompanying me when my parents weren’t available. Even when your steps slowed, you walked with me to and from school every day until you really couldn’t. I’m so sorry that you couldn’t even see me graduate from high school, and maybe you still can’t read English, but this book is for you.

To Ed Olson, possibly the quirkiest teacher I’ve had. You left us far too soon, but your legacy lives on. Through this book, inspired by your own principles of compassion and empathy—and even your love of photography—I hope you’ll impact far more people than you had ever met.

To anyone who has died in or suffered from a hate attack—in a deadly but preventable misunderstanding. I hope this book can pay respect what you had to experience. George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, Eric Garner, Yong Ae Yue, Suncha Kim, Soon Chung Park, Hyun Jung Grant, Daoyou Feng, Xiaojie Tan, Delaina Ashley Yaun, Paul Andre Michels, and countless more that I can’t begin to cover: I don’t know you, but I wish I still had the chance to meet you. May you rest in power and peace.

To books: thank you and all the writers who created you. Without you, this wouldn’t exist. Thank you for guiding me through my childhood, even though I only read Geronimo Stilton books for quite a while. Whatever your genre, you make me a little less ignorant with each read.

To the educational system that raised me: thank you for teaching me to read and write and value learning—a true privilege.

And thank you, the reader, for choosing to give this book a read despite your limited (scarce, for the economists out there) time and energy.

Contents

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Introduction

Chapter 1

Evolving Impressions

Chapter 2

Mind the Gap

Chapter 3

A Single Story

Chapter 4

Celebrating Diversity

Chapter 5

I Don’t (Need to) Understand

Chapter 6

A Linguistic Autobiography

Chapter 7

Storytelling with Strangers

Chapter 8

The Power of Writing - Part 1: Personal Writing

Chapter 9

The Power of WritinG - Part 2: Instapoetry and Form

Chapter 10

The Power of WritinG - Part 3: Spoken-word and Multimedia Poetry

Chapter 11

The Magic of Music

Chapter 12

Technology and Trends

Chapter 13

Media Representation

Chapter 14

Conclusion

Other Resources to Check Out

Acknowledgments

Appendix

So, I guess we are who we are for a lot of reasons. And maybe we’ll never know most of them. But even if we don’t have the power to choose where we come from, we can still choose where we go from there. We can still do things. And we can try to feel okay about them.

—Stephen Chbosky,

The Perks of Being a Wallflower

Introduction

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My name is Shoshana, and this is a story about forgiveness.

Shoshana told me a story about her older brother and his wife. They had known each other since they were twenty-two, but tensions grew after the wife began to display aspects of mental illness. The marriage ended in a bitter divorce, but Shoshana still cared about her. And when they met by chance in a restaurant years later, she expressed continued support for her. They shared a tender conversation of hope and love beyond strife.

It wasn’t a happy ending.

…She actually died just yesterday, and I’m feeling very raw and overwhelmed by it all.

I was reeling. How could Shoshana bear to speak in these circumstances? A surge of admiration and respect grew in me. I never imagined this would happen during my first virtual story exchange with Narrative 4, a global organization that facilitates story exchange events and promotes empathy. This woman went from being a stranger to someone I felt like I knew, someone far more than the pixelated face I was seeing through a screen.

How much do I diminish others’ identities and experiences in a glance? By making them part of the background of my life, I inadvertently size them up as lesser than they are, never capturing the entirety of their being.

* * *

I’m not the only person who does that. It’s easy and instinctual to make assumptions, to stereotype. It can be straightforward to assume that women are bad at math—which still holds them back in the workforce—and so on (Bohannon 2014). It’s also easy to put too much stock into first impressions. They shoved me as I was trying to step on to the bus: they must be such a jerk. They’re stuttering: they must be such a shy person. And we have so many assumptions that probably can’t even be conceptualized, a lot of unconscious bias that becomes especially difficult to rethink.

How many times have I dismissed someone because of the way they look or the people they hang out with? Have you ever thought someone was kind at first, but they weren’t the person you thought they were? Isn’t that why many breakups happen? It’s not just that people can be manipulative; in some ways, we enable this manipulation because we don’t see beyond the surface. 

But our ingrained, surface-level beliefs are limiting. The human experience is complex. You are far more than three words to describe yourself in a job interview or a story you tell about you and your childhood best friend. No one can see all our thoughts or how complicated they might be. You want to go for a run but would also like to sleep in. You might love learning about Latin American history but hate taking history classes. Maybe you hated eating vegetables as a child but grew up to love salads—things change—or maybe you only enjoy eating lettuce and carrots and can’t stand any other vegetable. Our experiences aren’t necessarily straightforward.

It’s this rich inner world and the different aspects of our lives—who we are at work versus at home, in a bad mood versus a good one—that we cannot grasp when we believe only our initial assumptions or one source of material, like an article about why some people choose to attend a university.

This doesn’t mean we should expect to eliminate stereotypical judgment or try to change our natural instincts. But I think everyone deserves a fair chance to be seen, heard, and respected. This book is about trying to honor that by pushing beyond our initial and ingrained views. There are too many stories that aren’t told and too many thoughts that aren’t listened to. We can learn from different viewpoints—especially about people’s life experiences, especially from people who have historically been marginalized.

* * *

You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view, until you climb inside of his skin and walk around in it.

—Atticus Finch

My eleven-year-old self didn’t realize it, but this quote would stick in my head for years to come after first reading To Kill a Mockingbird. It would influence the trajectory of my life, shaping me into someone who strives to be kind, not only in actions but also in thoughts.

It was the first time I realized how much I didn’t know about others. There was always more to someone’s story beyond what I could tell. So, the next time I tried to judge or label someone in my head, every time I assumed someone was simply rude or disruptive, I resolved to remind myself that there was more to their life than I could see. I didn’t like it when people made assumptions about me based on the sliver of my life they were exposed to, so why should I do the same?

It was the first time I understood a word I would only later come to learn, identify, and value: empathy. Now I think empathy is necessary for respect in that we should listen to others, be open to their perspectives, and consider their wants and needs in every interaction.

Years later, when I discovered Narrative 4 in university, I thought story exchanges were a safe space for people to learn about each other without judgment. I found myself feeling heard.

I also learned more about my peers’ struggles. Many people can barely afford to participate in extracurriculars, and there are various pronouns someone can identify with. Sexual assault, which I had first read about when I was fourteen, happens all the time, including to my friends. The deplorable and meaningless racism I first realized in To Kill a Mockingbird still exists, in earnest.

There are countless stories I have only brushed the surface of. There are countless stories no one has been exposed to, and without any awareness, it’s much harder to care—even if we can care about things we don’t fully understand. It’s much harder to change without being informed.

I want to tell those stories and understand how those stories are told.

My own realization about the complexity of identity has