A Choson Man In America

The publication of Yeen Myung Chang’s autobiography is a noteworthy occasion for those of us who desire to make stories of earlier Korean immigrants more available not only to our young readers of Korean ancestry in America, but also to the general readers in broader American society.

The Chang memoir contributes to this narrative in a number of ways. First, it is very rare to find an autobiography written by Korean immigrants who came to America between 1903 and 1905 to work on Hawaiian sugar plantations. Most of these workers were illiterate. More importantly, there was not a strong established tradition among ordinary Koreans to leave written records of their life. Second, Chang’s account offers a glimpse of the voyage that brought Korean workers to Hawaii. Third, Chang participated in the Korean independence movement in America and adds details to that period. Fourth, Chang converted to Christianity shortly before coming to America and his experience corroborates the tendency of these immigrants to adopt Christianity. Fifth, Chang was an activist in the Korean American community, an adventurous traveler and an early entrepreneur.
by Robert Hyung Chan Kim, Professor Emeritus, Western Washington University

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BEING TEXAN

Texas Monthly

Common as cornbread, old as dirt, funny as all get-out—homespun expressions link modern Texans to our rural and agricultural past, conveying the resolute spirit and plainspoken humor of our heroes and pioneers. Some sayings are instantly familiar because our parents or grandparents quoted them; others parallel the indisputable wisdom of biblical proverbs or Poor Richard’s Almanac; plenty just make us laugh. We asked twelve renowned artists to illustrate their favorite Texas sayings, and we present as well a sample of other axioms and adages common to the state—a collection of sayings as big as all hell and half of Texas.

Acceptable

It’s better than a poke in the eye with a sharp stick.
That’s close enough for government work.
Might as well. Can’t dance, never could sing, and it’s too wet to plow.
I could sit still for that.
You can’t beat that with a stick.

Boastful

He can strut sitting down.
He’s all hat and no cattle.
She’s all gurgle and no guts.
He chamber-of-commerced it.

Dishonest

He’s on a first-name basis with the bottom of the deck.
So crooked that if he swallowed a nail he’d spit up a corkscrew.
So crooked you can’t tell from his tracks if he’s coming or going.
He knows more ways to take your money than a roomful of lawyers.
Crooked as a dog’s hind leg.
Crooked as the Brazos.
Slicker than a slop jar.
More twists than a pretzel factory.
Crooked as a barrel of fish hooks.
So crooked he has to unscrew his britches at night.
She’s more slippery than a pocketful of pudding.
He’s slicker than a boiled onion.
I wouldn’t trust him any farther than I can throw him.

Honest

If that ain’t a fact, God’s a possum.
You can take that to the bank.
You can hang your hat on it.
You can bet the farm on it.
He’s so honest you could shoot craps with him over the phone.
If I say a hen dips snuff, you can look under her wing for the can.

Brave

Brave as the first man who ate an oyster.
Brave as a bigamist.
Brave enough to eat in a boomtown cafe.
He’s double-backboned.
He’s got more guts than you could hang on a fence.
He’d shoot craps with the devil himself.
She’d charge hell with a bucket of ice water.

Argumentative, Mad

She could start a fight in an empty house.
He’d argue with a wooden Indian.
She raised hell and stuck a chunk under it.
He’s the only hell his mama ever raised.
He’s got his tail up.
She’s in a horn-tossing mood.
She’s so contrary she floats up-stream.
She’s dancing in the hog trough.
He’ll tell you how the cow ate the cabbage.

Timid

He stays in the shadow of his mama’s apron.
If he was melted down, he couldn’t be poured into a fight.
He’s first cousin to Moses Rose.
He wouldn’t bite a biscuit.
He’s yellow as mustard but without the bite.
He may not be a chicken, but he has his henhouse ways.

Dry

So dry the birds are building their nests out of barbed wire.
So dry the catfish are carrying canteens.
So dry the trees are bribing the dogs.
So dry my duck don’t know how to swim.
It’s been dry so long, we only got a quarter-inch of rain during Noah’s Flood.
So dry I’m spitting cotton.
Dry as a powder house.
Dry as the heart of a haystack.
Drier than a popcorn fart.

Busy

He’s so busy you’d think he was twins.
They’re doing a land-office business.
Busy as a one-legged man at an ass-kicking convention.
Busy as a funeral home fan in July.
Busy as a one-eyed dog in a smokehouse.
Busy as a one-armed paperhanger.
Busy as a stump-tailed bull in fly season.
Busy as a hound in flea season.
Got to slop the hogs, dig the well, and plow the south forty before breakfast.
Got to get back to my rat killing.
She’s jumping like hot grease (or water) on a skillet.
Panting like a lizard on a hot rock.
No grass growing under her feet.

Unsophisticated

Just fell off the turnip (watermelon, tater) truck.
He’s so country he thinks a seven-course meal is a possum and a six-pack.
They lived so far out in the country that the sun set between their house and town.

Capable, Experienced

She’s got some snap in her garters.
He’s got plenty of arrows in his quiver.
She’s got horse sense.
He’s got plenty of notches on his gun.
She’s a right smart windmill fixer.
He could find a whisper in a whirlwind.
There’s no slack in her rope.
He’s a three-jump cowboy.
He can ride the rough string.
If she crows, the sun is up.
This ain’t my first rodeo.

Archivio GBB/Contrasto, via Redux

This space last week put more than glittering prose on display. It also showcased my musical ignorance. I included a reader-nominated sentence that likened a rushing-heavy football offense when Tom Brady is your quarterback to a bevy of drum solos when Eric Clapton is your guitarist. Many of you justly wrote in to note that when Clapton played with Cream, there were many extended solos by the band’s renowned drummer, Ginger Baker. I offer this paragraph as my percussion penance.

And now I turn to the death of Queen Elizabeth II — or, rather, to a mere sprinkle of the hundreds of thousands of excellent words written about it. In The Times, Hari Kunzru mulled the queen’s surrender to her peculiar station: “She seemed to accept that her role was to be shown things, so very many things.” (Thanks to Scott Kolber of Brooklyn, N.Y., for nominating that.) And Tina Brown described the queen’s cultured and deliberately opaque voice as having “the cut-glass tones of an everlasting British teatime.” (Chris Sheola, Ithaca, N.Y.)

In The New Yorker, Rebecca Mead posited that Elizabeth “spoke so seldom that even people who didn’t care what the queen said cared what the queen said.” (Ed Gallardo, Sun City West, Ariz.) And Anthony Lane looked beyond the queen to the trajectory of the nation that curtsied to her: “Could it be that what was once an empire, and then a commonwealth, will shrink to a single country, and then at last to one quiet village in Gloucestershire, with an empty church and a thriving line in marmalade?” (Eric Walker, Black Mountain, N.C.)

In The Washington Post, Ron Charles had great fun with his review of a hurried, bare-bones new thriller, “Blowback,” by James Patterson and Brendan DuBois. “The scenes are so short they could be written on napkins,” he wrote. “Several times the chapters break during conversations, as though somebody forgot to put a dime in the pay phone.” Additionally: “The dialogue is so corny it’s not delivered, it’s shucked.” (Carolyn Harrison, Kearney, Mo.)

Also in The Washington Post, Monica Hesse’s take on a new Apple TV+ road trip/interview show starring Hillary and Chelsea Clinton included Hesse’s description of Hillary’s tenseness when she re-emerges in the public eye: “It’s like the vague sense of unease when it’s been too long since your toddler made an appearance, and the cat and the finger paints are missing, too.” The Clintons, Hesse wrote, “approach comedy much as the Coneheads approached Earth.” And through their conversations with other celebrities, they “discover that comedy is more difficult for women, and fame is trickier for women, and moms are more judged than dads. If any of this is news to you, then I wish you a swift recovery from your head wound.” (Valerie Congdon, Waterford, Mich., and Christina Mitchell, Voorhees, N.J.)

And to return to — and end with — The Times, Katherine Rundell gorgeously distilled the poet John Donne’s belief in the expansiveness of our souls: “Tap humans, he believed, and they’d ring with the sound of infinity.” (Liz Keuffer, Cincinnati)

To nominate favorite bits of recent writing from The Times or other publications to be mentioned in “For the Love of Sentences,” please email me here, put “Sentences” in the subject line and include your name and place of residence.

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The New York Times

A colleague from Kyiv, Ukraine, whom I’ll call N.M., sent me brief essays her students wrote on what they would do when the war ends. As both a scholar and a novelist, I knew that these voices, which expressed a beautifully straightforward and pure yearning for the simplest things that are lost in war, needed to be heard by the world.

The essays were written in English, and N.M., who has a master’s degree in English language and literature, told me she made only “2-3 corrections.” The students attend the 10th and 11th grades at a Kyiv school, are 15 to 17 years old, and hail from the capital city and its suburbs. The essays were written between March 14 and March 18, 2022.

Several themes run through most of the essays. The teens yearn for peace and want to do ordinary things, such as meet family and friends, take walks, enjoy the city. Daily routines have become extraordinary after several weeks of war. All intend to stay in Ukraine. Despair is absent. The students expect the war to end with a Ukrainian victory, and they’re decidedly proud to be Ukrainian.

Their optimism is all the more remarkable in light of the essays’ having been written in mid-March, when anything like victory seemed remote. Many of the students have also learned an important existential lesson: Life can be cut short at any time, and it’s imperative to live it to the hilt.

Diana captures the overall mood well:

“Literally 2 weeks ago, everyone lived their quiet daily lives, but one night these lives changed forever. Russia attacked our cities and forced some people to leave their homes forever or stay in a dangerous place and live in a fear. But the horror cannot be eternal, the end will come, and it will be significant for our country. After our victory I will definitely meet all my friends and family members, I will say how much I love them. Also I will appreciate every moment spent with family and people of my heart. Also I will definitely help my country to recover what it lost, I will volunteer and after graduating from school, I will enter that faculty which will be useful for Ukraine. Now we can just hope and pray for the best.”

Like Diana, Masha yearns for the ordinary:

“Today the situation in our country is very difficult, and we understand that we did not appreciate our everyday life, our meetings with friends, and even a simple walk. … After all these circumstances, your views on life have changed, you begin to appreciate what was common and boring for you. After the war, we will all be completely different people!”

Dasha’s expectations are equally quotidian:

“When I come back home the first thing that I would do is play the piano. I will play as long as I can. After this, I will water my plants.”

Nastya, meanwhile, says,

“I’ll do everything I didn’t have time to do before the war. For example, I’ll go to the dentist, because it was that Thursday that I had an appointment with him for the evening. But most of all I want to come home to my peaceful and strong Ukraine.”

Anya’s discovered the depth of her patriotism:

“Every morning I get up and thank you God I’m alive. … When I heard explosions, I thought it can be my last minute. I will spend more time with my family and friends. And I will LOVE MY UKRAINE MORE THAN EVER.”

So has Sofia:

“We are strong, I am proud to be Ukrainian.”

Vlad is also feeling patriotic:

“When this war is over I will be thanking our Heroes, absolutely fearless defenders, who have been protecting our country this time. I’m totally proud of them. Their behavior inspires all the world and this is wonderful. … Anyway, we’re winning this bloodshed and building new country with freedom for our descendants. … I hope, our culture will be the best in the world and people will start respect it.”

Hlib’s optimism is both religious and political:

“I think that the war will be over when God says, because everything depends on him. Also when the President of Russia is removed or when all the supplies run out and all the soldiers retreat. When the Russian economy will be completely destroyed and the revolution will begin. When everyone will stop being afraid of the President of Russia and will oppose him. But the war will surely be over soon. Because good always wins.”

Anzhelika’s expectations concern politics – and food:

“I pray very much for Kyiv, because this is an incredible city that I dream of returning to! And after the war, of course, everyone will get drunk, so maybe I’ll drink a couple of drops for victory. And I dream of eating sushi, this is my favorite dish, so I’ll eat them all week. And of course I still want to go to university in Ukraine and live in Ukraine with my friends and relatives. And I believe that after the victory, not Ukraine will ask to join NATO, but NATO to [join] Ukraine, because our people have incredible strength! Glory to Ukraine!”

Alina picks up on the theme of Ukraine’s strength:

“These three weeks of a continuous horror changed all of us. Some people were left homeless, some people were left without relatives and a huge amount of Ukrainians lost their lives for peace. But there is at least one principal thing, which is common for all of us: Our nation became stronger. We became stronger. … Everything will be tranquil again. Everything will be Ukraine.”

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A second Alina looks at the war’s cost – and how Ukraine will move forward in its aftermath:

“Sooner or later the war will stop. These events will leave an imprint in every Ukrainian. … Maybe we will bury many thousands of people, but they all did not fall in vain. We will remember everyone. Then we will renovate our houses, malls, museums. … Ukrainian will build their future in a progressive country. We will all develop and other countries will respect us. No one will ask anymore ‘Ukraine? Where is it? Is it in Russia?’ Our country will join NATO and European Union. In the end no one will attack us again.”

General Advice

Pigs get fat; hogs get slaughtered.
A worm is the only animal that can’t fall down.
Never sign nothing by neon.
Just because a chicken has wings don’t mean it can fly.
Keep your saddle oiled and your gun greased.
You can’t get lard unless you boil the hog.
If you cut your own firewood, it’ll warm you twice.
There’s more than one way to break a dog from sucking eggs.
Give me the bacon without the sizzle.
Don’t hang your wash on someone else’s line.
Do God’s will, whatever the hell it may be.
Lick that calf again? (Say what?)
Why shear a pig?
Don’t snap my garters.
A guilty fox hunts his own hole.
Quit hollering down the rain.
Don’t rile the wagon master.
Better to keep your mouth shut and seem a fool than to open it and remove all doubt.
The barn door’s open and the mule’s trying to run. (Your fly’s down.)
Don’t get all het up about it.
There’s a big difference between the ox and the whiffletree.
There’s no tree but bears some fruit.
Skin your own buffalo.
You better throw a sop to the dogs.
Don’t squat on your spurs.
Any mule’s tail can catch cockleburs.
A drought usually ends with a flood.
If you lie down with dogs, you get up with fleas.
A lean dog runs fast.
The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.

Celebratory

Let’s shoot out the lights.
We’ll paint the town and the front porch.
Let’s hallelujah the county.
Put the little pot in the big pot.
Throw your hat over the windmill.
I’ll be there with bells on.
I’ll wear my Sunday-go-to-meeting clothes.
He’s all gussied up.

Big

Fat as a boardinghouse cat.
Fat as a town dog.
She’s warm in winter, shady in summer.
He don’t care what you call him as long as you call him to supper.
So big he looks like he ate his brother.
So big he has to sit down in shifts.
Big as Brewster County.
Big as Dallas.
Big as a Brahma bull.
She’d rather shake than rattle.
He’s big enough to bear hunt with a branch.
He’s all spread out like a cold supper.
Wide as two ax handles.
He’ll eat anything that don’t eat him first.

Cheap

Tight as Dick’s hatband.
Tight as a tick.
Tight as a clothesline.
Tight as a fiddle string.
Tight as wallpaper.
Tight as a wet boot.
Tight enough to raise a blister.
So tight he squeaks when he walks.
He’ll squeeze a nickel till the buffalo screams.
She has short arms and deep pockets.

Crazy

He’s got a big hole in his screen door.
She’s one bubble off plumb.
She’s one brick shy of a load.
She’s two sandwiches short of a picnic.
He’s a few pickles short of a barrel.
There’s a light or two burned out on his string.
He’s missing a few buttons off his shirt.
The porch light’s on but no one’s home.
He’s lost his vertical hold.
He’s overdrawn at the memory bank.
I hear you clucking, but I can’t find your nest.
She’s got too many cobwebs in the attic.
Crazy as a bullbat.
Crazy as Larrabee’s calf.

Published October 11, 2022

Gender-Neutral Form?

Meaning Of Mx.

When addressing strangers, authority figures, and in formal situations, it is considered polite to use an honorific, or title, to address them. The most frequently used honorifics are gendered male or female, which may not always be appropriate. In this article, we are going to review the most common honorifics, the alternative Mx., and how and when to use these titles.

What is the gender neutral term for Mr., Mrs., and Ms.?

The most commonly used gender-neutral honorific is Mx., pronounced [ miks ] or [ muhks ]. The first recorded use of Mx. was in 1977, where it was suggested as a less-sexist alternative to the traditional Mr., Mrs., and Miss. These forms are not only highly gendered, but they also link a woman’s status to whether she is married or not.

The honorific Mr., from master, is used for men regardless of marital status. The titles Mrs. and Miss, from mistress, are used for married and unmarried women, respectively. To reduce the emphasis on marriage, the alternative Ms. was coined in the 1950s for women regardless of marital status.

You can learn more about all of these forms and where they come from in the article “Mr., Mrs., Miss, and Ms.: What They Mean And How To Use Them.”

Just as Ms. solved the sexist problem that a woman was described based on her relationship to men, the form Mx. addressed the gendered nature of titles more generally. Although it was coined in the 1970s, it didn’t gain traction until the 2000s as there came to be greater mainstream acceptance of nonbinary or gender-nonconforming people (see A Language Of Pride: Understand The Terms Around LGBTQ Identity).

Mx. is now used as a preferred title for many who identify as neither man nor woman. This is not its only use, however. Like other gender-neutral forms of address, Mx. can also be useful when addressing an audience whose gender is unknown. A good example of this is on forms that use a title (think: Mx. _____).

While Mx. is the most common gender-neutral title, it isn’t the only one. Another alternative for nonbinary or gender-noncomforming people is Misc., short for miscellaneous, from the Latin for “mixed.” Similarly, the alternative title M. does away with all the gendered information that comes after the M in the other titles and is a simple way to express a variety of genders or lack of gender. Another option is Ind., short for individual. As with all titles, pronouns, names, and so forth, one should be mindful to use the language that a person uses for themselves.

Along those lines, professional titles are gender-neutral and may be preferred by people of any gender. The most common of these is Dr., short for doctor, which is used for Ph.D. holders and medical doctors. Captain and coach are also common titles that can be held in a variety of settings. People in the military can be referred to by their ranks, as in General or Sergeant. Members of the clergy in many faiths are also typically referred to by specific honorifics, such as Reverend or Rabbi.

What does Mx. stand for?

Mx. is a riff on the classic gendered titles Mr. and Ms. It keeps the M and swaps the gendered element of these terms for the gender-neutral X. The letter X has historically been used as a symbol for the unknown or indescribable. In this way, it is perfect for a gender-neutral honorific. Mx. shows respect while leaving the gender unknown or unarticulated. Other examples of words that use the letter X as an indication of gender-nonconformity that you may have come across are folx and womxn.

The purpose of using these titles, whether it’s Mr., Ms., Mx., or anything else, is to convey respect. (They are called “honorifics,” not “ruderifics,” after all.) Because that’s the goal, whatever title someone chooses for themselves is the one you should use for them. And whether you are nonbinary, gender nonconforming, or simply just not interested in being called a gendered title, if Mx. or any of these alternatives don’t feel fitting to you, you can always coin your own!