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Power of the gun tempts 'tongue-tied' new immigrants

By Andrew Lam: 0 Comment(s)Print E-mail Shanghai Daily, April 19, 2012

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We the people [By JIao Haiyang/China.org.cn]

For those who feel powerlessness to transform themselves, the gun can be seductive.

It provides power. It speaks in a language everybody understands. It speaks across color lines. It opens doors for the invisible into the public space.

Unfortunately, it is the language of annihilation and not creation. It speaks up once or twice, but often the user succumbs to his curse: that of silence.

One L. Goh, 43, an immigrant from Korea who allegedly shot and killed seven people at a school in Oakland, California, is the latest in a string of inarticulate men who became mass murderers in America. A few of his infamous predecessors are Seung-Hui Cho, the Virginia Tech shooter, and Jiverly Linh Phat Wong, the Binghamton killer.

Wong, in April of 2009, locked the back exit of a civic community center in Binghamton, New York State, where immigrants had gathered to learn English and shot 13 people before killing himself. Cho, a 23-year-old English major, shot and killed 33 people at Virginia Tech in 2007 before killing himself. Cho has since entered modern history as one of the worst mass murderers in the United States.

What ticked them off? They have no tongue.

The opposite of a cosmopolitan is a kind of aphonic [unable to speak] drifter, someone who fails at articulation. While the former can easily move from one culture to the next, the latter feels disconnected and marginalized by both.

The successful border-crosser is blessed with the power of metamorphosis and the gift of eloquence. His counterpart, alas, finds himself tongue-tied and trapped in a defective chrysalis, unable, but deeply desiring, to change.

What keeps him from that coveted transformation is language, the loose tongue, that shamelessness and a cunning ability to slide between worlds. Cho spoke with a speech impediment that made him a pariah at school; he was an English major who was lousy at expressing himself.

Though he had passed the US citizenship test, Wong was nevertheless defeated by the English language. He was reportedly frustrated by his inability to speak English despite two decades in America. He was, as his former coworkers described him, "quiet."

And now there's Goh. News reports mentioned that Goh felt ridiculed because of his lack of English-speaking skills.

Goh was upset at being disrespected. Administrators and several students, according to Oakland Police Chief Howard Jordan, "laughed at him. They made fun of his lack of English speaking skills. It made him feel isolated compared to the other students." And ashamed, which further binds the tongue.

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