About that…why are people so afraid of public speaking? When you get up to the podium, something happens. For a long time, that was my biggest fear. And when I say fear, I mean that when I so much as had to say something in class, I’d become almost paralyzed. I figured out why because, well, because I have a tendency to overanalyze myself. I not afriad of the actual act of standing in front of people and speaking. I was afraid of being the one upon whom all the attention was focused; I was afraid of screwing up. I was afraid that people would see my mistakes, and that I’d have to admit to myself that this was one thing I couldn’t do perfectly. Talk about self-desctructive, right? Anyway, I was talking to a few people that had read their pieces aloud at the symposium, and each one said that he or she was a little nervous. Probably not to the extent that I had once been (I hope), but nervous nonetheless. Because we’re so averse to judgement. Because we like people to like us–we want to be accepted.
Standing at the podium, you’re the person we’re all looking at. Doesn’t work that way while you’re in the audience. We can see what you look like. We can hear your voice, and how you speak. And, of course, we take into account the piece that you’re reading. For many people watching you, this is a one-shot deal, a first-impression opportunity. And while we’re conscious of it or not, we, in the audience, are going to judge you based on how you look up there and on what and how you read. In Black Skin White Masks, Fanon says that he is “not a slave to the ‘idea’ that others have of me but of my own appearance” (116). The same is true for readers at the Symposium. What’s funny (ironic, conincidental, can we say?) is that Kim’s short short called “Time For Talking” emulates Fanon’s idea of being defined by appearances and by the other, while in the bigger picture we see that readers at the symposium are under scrutiny, just like the character in her story is. The story is written in the second person. The narrator is a woman on a train trying to make conversation with her fellow passenger. The trouble is that the woman is raggedy and old, while the man she’s talking to is younger and business-like. In the beginning, the listener could tell that the man wasn’t receptive at all to this woman; that he thought her crazy and annoying. She says, “I won’t hurt you. I’m just talking.” She guesses as to his aversion. “Is it the coat?…What do you expect from a park lady?” She defines herself as a park lady, but this definition most likely wasn’t her own invention. It’s the name given to her–the identity or the being given to her–by those who pass judgement. But as she’s talking to the man, he gets to know her beyond her appearance–for instance, she had a daughter, Anna, whom she loved dearly. He can relate, because he has a child, too. At the story’s conclusion, the male passenger ends up offering her money, presumably out of compassion for her. But, unfortunately, Fanon would say that the male passenger still cannot shed his preconceived notions about her. “When people like me,” he writes, “they tell me it is in spite of my color” (116). I wonder if the man would say this to the passenger next to him once the woman got off the train–that she was a good woman, a lively and interesting spirit, even if she was a little scruffy on the outside.
