Interrogating Privilege: Reflections of a Second Language Educator

Chapter 3: Tea and TESOL

Chapter 3 Tea and TESOL When I am about eight years old, my family is on furlough from my parents ’ missionary work in India, and living in Vancouver.There we live in a large old house provided by the church. Along with the usual furnishings, there is an extensive set of teacups in a pretty built-in cabinet in the dining room. While we live there, my mother often hosts church women’s groups to talk about missionary work.Featured at these meetings is tea served in these delicate teacups. I am thrilled when I am allowed to, very carefully, set out the cups and saucers before the “ladies” arrive. Later, as I peek into the room after a meeting has started, the image etched in my mind is that of women leaning toward each other, in a buzz of eager voices, a community of women sharing their connections over tea in these beautiful vessels, these teacups, just as so many women in so many different places throughout the world have shared their lives and concerns over tea. My reading group is coming to my house. I clean my house and prepare light refreshments. One of the most important things I do is to choose and set out teacups from my teacup collection, along with an elegant creamer and sugar bowl. 36 3: Tea andTESOL 37 I take pride in serving tea in these lovely china cups, and my friends enjoy sipping from them as we discuss novels by women authors, novels that often include descriptions of women drinking tea together. The first time I take my daughter to afternoon tea,when she is about six years old,we go to the St.Francis Hotel in downtown San Francisco,on Union Square, where the fashionable stores are. She dresses up, even wearing white gloves. She enjoys her cocoa as I drink tea, and we share an assortment of tiny, exquisite sandwiches and pastries as we talk.A thoughtful pianist plays songs from musicals such as The Sound of Music and Mary Poppins especially for her. It is the first of many mother-daughter teas we have shared in many cities all over the world, each of these lovely rituals providing an added memory for us to treasure. I do not think of myself as a collector; in fact, I pride myself on regularly going through and eliminating possessions, keeping only what I really want and need. But in fact I have several collections. Some are the obvious ones that most people have: photos, letters, family keepsakes. I still have somewhere in a box in a closet my childhood stamp collection, evoking memories of my beloved father’s giving each of us four children a stamp album and regular “first day covers,” and of my brothers’ and my eagerly finding or buying stamps on our own and just as eagerly trading with each other. I have numerous photo albums documenting my life, my family’s life, and, especially, my daughter’s life. But here I focus on one special collection,one that is symbolically very important to me:my teacup collection. I explore what teacups, and tea, mean to me, and their complicated connections with my life and with my work in TESOL. They are meaningful to me in complex,layered ways,yet I also feel some ambivalence about the types of privilege they sometimes embody. In the corner of our light-filled living room,in a beautiful cabinet with a leaded glass-paned front, sits my collection of delicate china teacups. Every time I look at them, I feel the pleasure brought on by a host of Interrogating Privilege 38 associations with some of my favorite times and places and objects:British literary novels from Jane Austen’s to Barbara Pym’s; British mystery novels from Agatha Christie’s to Dorothy Sayers’; England itself, with its lovely green countrysides, its villages and its thatched cottages; graceful, elaborate afternoon teas in beautiful hotel lobbies and tea rooms around the world; women everywhere offering each other cups of tea and leaning toward each other over those cups as they talk about everything that matters most to them.The usual accompanying delicacies such as little sandwiches and pastries make these tea-drinking occasions, and associations , all the sweeter. I started collecting teacups over thirty years ago, but my emotional connections with them go back to my childhood.When I grew up...