How We Listen to Audiotexts, and Why We Should Listen Equitably
As an English student at UTA, I have had many opportunities to read, write, discuss and analyze many different written literary works. This is incredibly useful in developing my analysis and critical thinking skill. However, as a sound studies minor, there are times when I wish I could focus more on how sound affects our society and the world around us. This semester, I am enrolled in a class featuring only audio works. Not only has it widened my perspective of what it means to listen to literature, but it has also shown me the importance of doing it in an equitable way. In class, we spent time going over Jennifer Stoever’s theory of “the listening ear”— a concept derived from Laura Mulvey’s “the gaze”— and Marie Thompson’s essay “Gendered Sound”. After listening to Charles Yu’s Interior Chinatown and Rebecca Roanhorse’s “Your Authentic Indian Experience”, it was clear to me the many connections and representations of Stoever and Thompson’s theory in each respective work. Their insights and theories were fascinating to me, as they dissect something so ubiquitous, yet hidden in plain sight! (Or plain ear!) Considering how we listen is vital, and thinking about the ways some are inherently at a disadvantage due to voice is a struggle I have never had to consider. The way sound affects racial perceptions is pervasive and ingrained into our society, meaning it’s something we should review and closely analyze. In this article, I spend time dissecting this connection, as well as my thoughts about it. I hope you find reading this article as reflective and intriguing as I did writing it!
The act of listening is unique in its versatility as both oppression and resistance. In it, we are able to practice patience and empathy; listening can also be used as voyeurism of appropriation, colonization, and racialization. This is depicted in similar ways in both Rebecca Roanhorse’s “Your Authentic Indian Experience?” and Charles Yu’s Interior Chinatown. Both texts chronicle the corrosive effects of white superiority in different ways, presenting the oppression and colonization of marginalized groups through sonic and literary means.
In her book, The Sonic Color Line, Jennifer Stoever introduces her theory of the “listening ear”. This theory, inspired by and close interlocutor with “the gaze” by Laura Mulvey, essentially states that listening is an action encasing a transaction of power, placing the listener in a state of empowerment and the speaker as the objectified and disempowered. As applied by Stoever, this theory has significant racial implications. Stoever argues that “White-constructed ideas about ‘sounding Other’—accents, dialects, ‘slang,’ and extraverbal utterances, as well as ambient sounds—have flattened the complex range of sounds actually produced by people of color, marking the sonic color line’s main contour.” (Stoever 11). Essentially, Stoever argues that Whiteness, as the dominant, determining factor of what is ‘normal’ in society, has designated any sound produced by people of color as abnormal. White individuals throughout history have then successfully grouped stereotypical sounds they associate with people of color and said that though they should speak in a way that aligns with this stereotype, they are also labeled as abject and less than if they do.?
We can see this idea evidenced through main character Willis Wu’s perspective in Interior Chinatown and the fictional television show Black and White that is woven into the storyline, created to represent Willis’ belief that the Asian face complicates the clean, binary fictional reality too much, and is the reason he is always the background character (Yu 39). It is not until Willis fakes an accent, accepting his role as a Generic Asian Man and all the racialization and linguistic implications that come with it, that he is able to begin making progress on his career. This concept is paralleled in “Your Authentic Indian Experience?”, where main character Jesse Turnblatt is made to change his appearance, voice, speech pattern, and mannerisms to reflect that of a “real Indian”. This use of accent as character is something Yu and Roanhorse portray as vital for the survival of these men. Without it, the cognitive dissonance that surfaces for white actors, tourists, and audiences is too complicated. Marie Thompson argues in her essay “Gendered Sound” that transfeminine women are often seen as “fake” if they do not play to normative vocal and sonic standards when speaking. This argument could be modified to apply to race and applied to the themes Yu and Roanhorse perpetuated throughout their stories, as both works highlight how characters of color are not taken seriously or seen as “fake” if they do not perform to stereotypical vocal standards by speaking with an accented voice.?
This conundrum is compounded in Interior Chinatown through Older Brother’s monologue in Act 6, reading that even when Asian-Americans “gauge the scene” and perform what’s expected of them, they are still seen as abject (Yu 239). Stoever maintains this point, writing that white people have been conditioned to understand and perceive the world differently while simultaneously perpetuating their understanding as universal truth (Stoever 10). This means sounds produced by people of color such as accents, dialects, “slang” and extraverbal utterances are generalized and exoticized, all identified as ‘other’ and standing out to the white ear, while whiteness has the privilege of remaining invisible. This allows whiteness to become synonymous with “normal” (Stoever 11). As a first-generation Asian-American, Willis implicitly understands what his father, Ming-Chen, had to learn; that “in order to have the rights and privileges of national citizenship and at times, shockingly, to be considered human— one has to listen similarly to power” (Stoever 20). This means adopting an accent he doesn’t have; it means Jesse is fired from his job for not being “Indian enough”. Through this understanding of Stoever and Thompson and my interpretation of these works, authenticity translates to expectation, not truth.?
Not only do we see the implication of racialized voice in both Interior Chinatown and “Your Authentic Indian Experience?”, we hear it in their audio performances. Joel de la Fuente, audiobook narrator of Interior Chinatown has a specifically racialized voice for each character. The same goes for LeVar Burton’s narration of Roanhorse’s story; they both actively perpetuate Stoever’s theory of sonic racialization in order to convey the same point. As listeners of these performances, we are participating in Stoever’s idea of the “listening ear”. With authors of color and performers of color, both audiobooks present these stories in a way that allows us as listeners the power of Subject, and the stories as Object. As the Subject, we are left to decide whether or not what the Object has to say is worthy of our time. Our job as listeners then becomes to recognize our position of power and resist these stereotypes, subverting this dynamic in favor of a more equitable one, and thus allowing the speaker to develop true agency over their identity.?
Yu portrays a subversion of Stoever’s idea in his novel during Act 6 with the Judge. While the Judge’s race is never specified, it is heavily implied based on his position of power and flagrant disrespect of the groups present in court that he is white. This interpretation adds another dimension of resistance in the monologue Older Brother gives to the court, asking, “why doesn’t this face register as American?” (Yu 228). This shows Older Brother and Stoever are particularly aligned on the topics of subjection and nationalism. Through Stoever’s lens, this could be paralleled as “what about this voice makes you uncomfortable? Why is it classified as ‘other’?”. The exclusion of Asian Americans from the classification of “American” by codification through the justice system was born from a form of nationalism meant only to include white faces, features, and dialectics. Older Brother’s moment of resistance is vital in the structure of the listening ear’s concept, as it allows people of color to take the instrument of their oppression (the speaking voice) and turn it into that of their resistance.? In this, we see a flickering deconstruction of the listening ear. In this moment, Older Brother as the speaker becomes the Subject; the Judge, and, by extension, the American justice system, becomes the Object.?
The observance of sonic differences as cultural alterity by Stoever and Thompson are represented in both Yu and Roanhorse’s stories. The notion that a white person’s idea of authenticity is, in reality, often a person of color’s construction of performance is a pervasive one in American culture. As critical listeners of audiotexts, this is a major reason we must realize the importance of distinguishing between perceived identity and accurate identity, and practice equitable listening by being able to identify and call out the racialization of voice, and the discrimination that results.?
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Works Cited?
Roanhorse, Rebecca. "Your Authentic Indian Experience? " LeVar Burton Reads. Narrated by LeVar Burton. July 2018. Spotify.
Stoever, Jennifer Lynn. The Sonic Color Line: Race and the Cultural Politics of?
Listening, New York University Press, 2016. pp 1-28. ProQuest Ebook?
Thompson, Maria. “Gendered Sound.” The Routledge Companion to Sound Studies, edited by??
Michael Bull, Routledge, 2018: pp. 108-117.?
Yu, Charles. Interior Chinatown. Vintage Contemporaries, 2020.?
Yu, Charles. Interior Chinatown. Narrated by Joel de la Fuente, Spotify, 2020. Audiobook.