On the spur of the moment, we’d dropped by our favorite Korean restaurant, the Spring Garden, a charming mom-and-pop operation in Camp Hill.
We always order the same things there: a big scallion pancake; a fiery shredded pork and vegetable dish called jaeyook bokeum; and an assortment of kimchi, those little dishes of spicy fermented vegetables that put Western pickles to shame.
As soon as I walked in, the hostess, a friendly lady with minimal English, who nevertheless likes to brag about the home-grown vegetables they use at the restaurant, knew what I was after. “You sit there,” she said, pointing to a chair in front of the shuttered sushi station. “Just be one minute.”
I don’t carry a smart phone, and since this was an impromptu visit, I didn’t have a book or magazine with me, so I turned my attention to a stack of Korean magazines on the counter.
I took the one on top, a glossy monthly with a gorgeous Asian model on the cover. At least there’d be pretty pictures…
Based on the slick photos, the magazine seemed to be a guide to style and health. In other words, a compendium of advertisements, some of them honest — the ones hawking their wares in the margins — and the rest disguised as aspirational “how-to” and “best-of” articles.
The format was familiar. I might have been reading Vogue or GQ if it weren’t for one small detail: I don’t read Korean.
Great writing isn’t really the point of glossy magazines, and I certainly wasn’t the target audience anyway. But it was a strange experience, flipping through page after page of unfamiliar symbols, not really knowing if an article was highlighting summer dresses, fancy watches, minimalist furniture, or special recipes for romance.
The extent of my Korean is that I know it when I see it — most of the time. I can usually tell whether I’m looking at Chinese, Japanese, or Korean characters. But beyond that, it’s just a jumble of strokes on a page.
It was frustrating not to be able to read the magazine, but the ads still conveyed a surprising amount of information. For instance, just based on the graphics and telephone numbers I saw in the margins, I’d know who to call if I had a silverfish problem, or where to go for a scary-looking laser eye treatment.
Even so, I felt utterly excluded — helpless, even — in the face of those impenetrable articles. This was a world I’d never be able to enter.
As those of you who’ve been reading my op-eds over the past few years can attest, reading and writing are at my core. I’ve spent a lifetime absorbing books and ideas, and unleashing my word horde on an unsuspecting public in the form of novels, stories, and opinion pieces. I can’t imagine staring at a page of English text and not being able to sink into it — and conversely, having it sink into me.
But that’s exactly how it was at the Spring Garden. There probably wasn’t much wisdom in the magazine’s articles, but I’d never know. Those indecipherable paragraphs represented a cultural transmission, however feeble, however debased by commercial interests. But a transmission, nonetheless, that I couldn’t receive.
It would be hard for anyone reading these words right now to remember what it was like to look at a page of writing and feel helplessly excluded. Once literacy is gained, it’s virtually impossible to remember what it was like to look at a street sign and see only a block of color with some geometric symbols on it.
But even if we take our own literacy for granted, we should remember that there are adults among us who want to read, or read better, but simply can’t.
According to the National Center for Education, something like 20% of adults in Pennsylvania operate at the lowest end of the literacy spectrum. Even if we set aside the democratic ideal of a well informed citizenry and focus on more practical matters, this should alarm us. Low literacy is linked to all sorts of undesirable outcomes, from poverty to teen pregnancy.
It’s in our common interest that everyone — and I do mean everyone — be able to read, and read well. Towards that end, I urge you to support the Perry County Literacy Council, either by volunteering as a tutor, if time and circumstances allow, or by a tax-deductible donation. Visit their website at www.perryliteracy.com.
If you can read this, please help.
