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Sims, Jaehee
Professor Megan Howard
ENGL 101/A
Memoir Portfolio Draft
5/ 6/2016

Stitch Words
One late spring afternoon, when a crisp wind blew into our classroom, my thumb,
holding a yellow thread, was sweaty, and I was starting to lose my patience with trying to make
a perfect chain stitch. A slippery needle, caused by my sweat, skipped the stitch once again. I
thought that my navy vest was too tight and thick to wear on these warm days. That warm
afternoon, in the classroom, all girls, who wore the same thick navy vest and skirt, were sitting
with needles, and embroidering rainbows on their white aprons. These aprons were to be worn
for the next cooking class.
Every girl in my class seemed to be enjoying this sewing class, except me. Some of the
girls who had already finished their projects showed each other their pretty aprons which were
perfectly embroidered with rainbows that were combined with chain stitches, French knots, and
satin stitches. I looked at my crooked yellow line in the middle of the rainbow, and murmured
that I would never get an A grade on this sewing project. I was deeply displeased about why I
had to learn those silly stitches and how my messed up sewing work would be graded as
important as memorizing English vocabulary and mathematical formulas during the freshman
year in middle school.

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Growing up as a girl in Korean society, I was not pleased with the clear gender
expectations which strongly affected Korean society. When I was born in the Hospital in Seoul,
Korea, my father wished his first child was a boy who could carry the family name and support
the family, so he held a piece of paper with my unborn brothers name in Chinese characters and
the Korean alphabet. Being surprised by my arrival, my father picked up my name. He felt
unexpected parental responsibilities about how to raise a girl, so he began drawing a image of the
Ideal Woman for me. Unfortunately, my fathers the Ideal Woman and me did not match
well, like day and night. My father looked for a quality, elegant and obedient girl who was
qualified to meet Mr. Right, yet eventually he had a daughter who loathed wearing a skirt and
complained all the time about house duties. I did not agree with his idea of a daughters future
based on traditional gender expectations. If there is my Mr. Right, I want to be recognized as
who I am, not as being a skilled housewife.
Three years after I was born, my brothers arrival was expected and welcomed in our
family. At that time, the 3-year-old piece of paper with my brothers name was useful. My father
proudly reported my brothers birth with that paper at the register office. As I turned into a
teenager, I could clearly see my place and my brothers one too. In order to keep my brothers
precious masculinity, he was always watching TV while I was washing dinner dishes. A
combination of unfairness from gender role expectations and teenage confusion seized me. My
anger and privation unmanageably oozed out of that wound, so I needed to find a bowl to catch
my emotions. First of all, I began writing a lot of curse words about my lazy brother and
described his horrifying acne instead of saying it directly to him, which could be a cause of

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trouble. It was so fun to read how much he looked like an idiot in my writing. I felt the strength
of words that gave me empowerment and accomplishment. When I wrote something, I did not
need to be a teenage girl who had to learn house tasks to be a good wife. I could be anything
like drifting white clouds constantly changing their shape in the blue sky.
My writing had started with grumblings about unfair treatment due to gender
expectations, but it turned a different way. As I wrote something more and more, I began to have
an idea for stories. After washing the dishes, I closed my rooms door firmly enough to not hear
any TV sounds from the living room. Sometimes, my brothers eerie laughing sounds sneaked
into my room, but it did not matter. When I opened my black notebook which was secretly
hidden under my math book, I was not in my room any more. Warm darkness enwrapped me. I
looked up to see splattered white paint drops all over the Milky Way. They were softly glittering
in the dark space, as if they were waiting for me to be captured by my black pen. I was showing
those glamorous lights to a girl in my writing, who faced an important mission in untouched
space over the Milky Way, and telling her that unknown darkness is not a scary thing. The
darkness can turn into a comfortable place to release her. I wanted to make her ready to walk into
that darkness by herself with some confidence. At that time, I was writing a teenage science
fiction story. Unfortunately, I was sure that my story was not valued with any bit of literary
quality, but I could not stop myself writing this cheesy story which had occupied most my mind.
Therefore, I wrote and wrote most my adolescent nights with a grin.
Sometimes, I brought my black notebook to school because of a forty minutes lunch
break. In the classroom, there were a few sleepy classmates and me. Forty minutes was good

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enough to travel in space for me. I could not wait for writing about the angst cold-faced girl who
just woke up in a bright white capsule bed. What are you writing? I jumped and looked at one
of my classmates who had silently slid into next to my seat. What could I say? I shook my head
to find some words to disguise my hilarious story to be normal.Can I read it? While I paused
with a blank look, my classmate took my pause as a yes. She grabbed my black notebook and
started to read it. Watching her reading my virgin story was one of my most nervous times ever,
like waiting for my messed up English test with thin hope because of the awareness of the poor
value of my writing. I did have a fever for writing, but I thought it was not good enough to show
others. I had not told anyone close to me about my writing. It was just another Teddy Bear for a
scary night. When she finished, she looked at me, Is there any more? That saying lifted me up
instantly, and gave me confidence when other classmates asked me to read my story. My black
notebook started to travel across my classroom with 40 girls.
Instead of finishing that story, I wrote another story on a white notebook because I
received a lot of comments from my classmates who had read my black notebook. This time, I
took a dedicated request from my readers: put a handsome boy next to the heroine. At that
time, we did not have fancy dark screens in our hands and Twilight by Stepheine Meyer. The girl
who spent more than 8 hours a day at school for 6 years with 300 other girls deserved a Prince
Charming.
After graduating from high school, I folded my school uniform and put it into a box
where my dorky unfinished notebooks had been stored. I felt that the school uniform and those
stories belonged to my adolescent days more than my 20s because as an adult, I found something

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which was very important. My father did not stop insisting that I had to be a proper young lady
who could be a good wife and mother. At that time, I understood why he insisted that I should be
proper. My father just loved me. He wanted his daughter to be loved by a future husband and his
family. When I realized my fathers love, I did not need my notebooks to ease my stress
anymore, but my yen for writing kept me through college. During college days, I continuously
wrote some stories which were more realistic. I wrote a story about a man who was shunned by
his own family because of his homosexuality, and described a girls room which was filled with
her longing for her brother who committed suicide. However, I never wrote about myself.
One late winter night, when a cold wind crawled from a cracked window, I was
sitting at a desk with a white screen. My needle was dulled and rusty more than usual, but my
colored thoughts had not faded. I took a glittering yellow thread through my dulled needle eye.
Although holding the yellow thread down with my thumb was not easy, I was anxious to make
a stitch. Word by word, sparking yellow words tied to each other became a chain. My stitches
drew a rainbow bridge on the screen with perfect arch. I walked into the yellow rainbow bridge
to the other side. On the other side, she was there holding my old two notebooks. I found my
15-year-old self who was stubborn and had self-esteem. She was grinning at me.