La Rivelazione

The Islanders
Nov 4 · 3 min read

I started a podcast with two of my best friends near the end of summer 2019. It’s based loosely about our English learning journey and it’s great. I’ve had much fun doing it. And to justify spending three hours every Tuesday to record it in my room/home studio, we say that it helps us practice speaking up, to help us hone our English speaking skills. I don’t know about the other two hosts, but my goal was to hopefully become a native speaker.

Like an ABC. Or an ABT, to be politically correct.

Fast forward three months, and we’ve finished season one of the podcast. We’re still struggling with getting audiences, but at least we got the project off the ground and are constantly supplying it with our creative fuel. As self-appointed executive producer of the show, I’m constantly thinking about what to do with it, as if I’m playing a strategy game. And within one thinking session, I began to ponder upon the origins of my desire to create a podcast.

‘I wanted to get better at speaking English’, I thought.

Back in last year, my friend Daniel (also one of the hosts) organized a group of classmates and friends to practice speaking English every Wednesday afternoon, and I participated for a full year. I was very eager to improve my English speaking, but I found the weekly assembly not useful or effective enough. I then started the podcast to force myself into using English for up to hours at a time, and subsequently cited Daniel’s book club as an origin story.

Boy was I wrong.

Upon further thinking about this matter, I realized the desire to speak English better had been inside my unconscious mind for quite some time. And bear in mind, when I say that I desperately wanted to improve my English, I am actually exaggerating a little bit. Born to an English speaking family, my English was already better than I think 90% of my peers, just not native speaker fluent. Not to be complacent by any means, just putting things into perspective.

As part of my English bettering journey, I also joined the library English Touring Team(and this was before Daniel’s book club). I did tours for important guests of the school every two weeks(for no pay) and did it for a whole semester. By the end of the semester, the curator organized a party for all the tour guides to thank us for our work over the school year. I was a rookie that year, and naturally felt distant and out of place. At that party, I came across two senior classmates who were born and raised in the US, then came back to Taiwan for university education. They were chatting, and, sitting on the same table, eventually noticed me and one of them asked me if I was born in the US. I said no, and the other senior said:

‘I know. He was just sitting there being Taiwanese.’, in response to me sitting there eating lunch quietly.

It sounded so derogatory, and still to this day, I cannot forget what it feels like to be discriminated by your own people. Reminiscing the situation, I remembered feeling bad and ashamed of myself for being silent and collected. For being Taiwanese. Never had I wanted to change something about myself this urgently.

Then began the journey of poor James trying to be an ABC, tying to be something that he is not. If only I could improve, then I would have the courage to speak up in public. Trying to become the exact person that hurt me(hurt is a strong word though, maybe scratch).


When I think about it now, about two years later, I still find it quite disturbing. It baffles me how a simple sentence can be so powerful to others, and through a sickening way, I think has helped me grow as a person. I’ll still continue to do the podcast and better my English, but as a Taiwanese. A proud Taiwanese. As a side note, I wanted to use this thinking session(and this article) to remind myself to never judge people for what they aim to be, or who they are, and I think it applies to a lot of identities and values.

TL;DR: You should always be proud of yourself no matter who you are. Not in an arrogant way, but more like accepting who you are internally. I used to always think of this kind of philosophy as cliché, but I guess it’s more true than ever.

Oh, and fuck you, Mark.

The Islanders

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