What’s in a name?
For this #AcWriMoment, turn your attention to a name you’ve chosen for your body of work or a piece of it. In your journal, in your imagination, or in conversation with a friend, reflect on these questions:
What meanings does the name hold for you? How has the name guided your writing process, or how could it guide your process? Might another name be waiting to be chosen by you? Guided by a name you have chosen, what is one small step you can take in your work today?
I did not expect to cry on Day 2 of #AcWriMoments. As the blogger described the angst over choosing a name for her child, she realized that the name will be what the child makes of it, not the other way around. ‘Anything we create — humans, scholarship, works of art — merely moves through us on its way into the world.’ Reading these words released the pressure I have been putting on myself to shape my research and interests to fit neatly and succinctly into the academic mold.
When I think about names and my body of work, the acronym ‘NAJUA’ comes to mind. Yes, now I use that rendering instead of ‘NAUA.’ According to a reviewer of a recent article, the ‘J’ in ‘anti-Japanese’ should be capitalized. I always liked ‘NAUA’ better—it felt more concise and symmetrical—plus, neither of my supervisors ever seemed to mind. But now I can’t get the critique out of my mind, and I can’t justify the missing ‘J’ for any real reason, grammatical or theoretical. Still, it felt like a betrayal (however irrational the thought) of the army? my thesis? to change it.
The name I chose for this website! So obscure, so anachronistic. When I came up with it, I desperately wanted to clothe myself in all things Dongbei—another name that means different things to different people. I imagined branching out from 1940s Dongbei research but staying in the vicinity. Now that I’ve been away from China for nearly a decade, I find it harder and harder to get back to that state of mind. I miss Dongbei, as one always misses a home, but there’s so much about the place I don’t know. It would take more than a lifetime to be an expert. Wait, expert?? There’s that standard again.
Other, more personal feelings cloud what clarity I seek. Abandonment. The complex of it, the experience…the fear of it, the shame. It lives with me. Admitting it here is like walking through mud barefoot. But I can see a psychological parallel with my research on Manchuria. Should I stay loyal to it if it is fast slipping through my fingers? If I let it go, what will take its place? Who am I without a name?