2024-2025 Writing Showcase Texts

I’ve always hated the feeling of doing something poorly. In fact, many of the things that I’ve given up on in my life are the things that make me feel incompetent or inadequate. I’m choked so tightly by my ego that I can’t possibly endure the embarrassment of letting myself down. Knowing that it takes years to perfect, I gave up on pottery after one try because nothing I made was even remotely salvageable. I wanted to take some ballet classes, but I knew that I would be the most uncoordinated person in the room. I refuse to sing in front of people because I’m awful and have never wanted to learn how to get better. But there’s one thing that I was unbearably bad at that I could not give up on or refuse to try, and that is public speaking. 

The bane of my existence for 13 years was something that my classical school called “Laurel Wreath.” Based on the ancient Greek idea of receiving a laurel wreath as a prize for excelling, our “Laurel Wreath” was the speech competition of my nightmares. Every year, each grade level would be given an excerpt of respective difficulty to memorize word for word. We would be assigned anything from Bible passages to poems to rousing historical battle speeches.  

The younger students would be assigned shorter excerpts, lines that took only a couple minutes to recite, whereas the older students’ recitations could be pages and pages long and could take as long as 20 minutes. Each student was required to perform their excerpt in front of the class, and the best student from each class was chosen to present to the entire school. 

My first Laurel Wreath experience was in first grade, and I vividly remember when it was my turn to get up out of my blue plastic chair at my little wooden desk in my little plaid jumper to attempt to recite the poem Wynken, Blynken, and Nod in front of 20 pairs of little first grade eyes and a measly panel of “judges.” But, all I could manage was obnoxious sobbing and wailing once I got up there. My first-grade teacher Mrs. Stolberg, one of the kindest people I ever met with a soft, friendly face, let the crying go on for a bit before she pitied me and told me that I could recite it to her privately after class. I remember being embarrassed that I caused a scene, but mostly relieved that I got out of it. But above all, what I remember from this encounter was thinking, “I never want to do this ever again.” Needless to say, I was not the selected winner from the first-grade class. 

Over my elementary years, I was forced to do many different recitations for Laurel Wreath, most of which have blurred together in my brain as being similarly traumatic  experiences. I can remember barely getting through Psalm 19 and Exodus 20. I remember reciting Patrick Henry’s dramatic, rousing monologue, Give Me Liberty or Give Me Death, in a disinterested, monotone voice with my hands glued to my sides.  

It was in middle school that something switched in my head. What if I had spent so long being so scared of something that I had let it paralyze me from trying to get better? Speaking in a monotone voice with no hand gestures had become my safety blanket to protect me from the embarrassment that would occur if I had actually tried and crashed and burned. So it was my 8th grade recitation of Genesis 1:26-31-Genesis 3 where I really tried to inflect my voice, walk around the front of the class, and use hand gestures like my teachers had been telling me to do for years. It felt awkward at first, but the feeling of facing the fear felt a lot better than letting it hold me back. 

Just when my confidence was up for the first time, in 10th grade, something happened that took me right back to first grade again. I remember the exact tan uniform skirt I was wearing and the way that the students awkwardly laughed as I completely blanked on every last line of my Robert Frost poem. My teacher kept prompting me with the beginning of each line, but none of it was ringing a bell. I remember saying weakly, “Can I try again later?”, and I trudged back to my seat in the back of the room, dragging my dignity across the tile floor behind me. First grade me would have run out sobbing, but 10th grade me was determined to prove to myself that I could handle a bit of failure. I sat through the rest of the presentations silently reciting the poem to myself again, and at the end of class, when Mr. Cunningham told me to give it another try, I did not forget a single word. Though I felt embarrassed by what the class might think of me, I remember this moment as a personal victory and as a time when I let my pride shrink ever so slightly. 

“Micah Dowdy to the front office please, Micah Dowdy to the front office.” I remember getting called to the Principal’s office in 11th grade over the loud speaker. My heart pounding in my chest, I wracked my brain for what I could have done wrong. Was I on my phone too much or was my tan pleated skirt too short? My legs eventually carried me to my Principal’s stuffy, dark oak office with yellowing maps framed on the wall. Next thing I know, he’s asking me if I would be willing to write and present a speech about the Christian view of beauty in art and language at the upcoming annual Pastor’s Breakfast. The room started to close in a bit as I envisioned myself fumbling over my words standing shakily in front of elderly men eating cold breakfast sandwiches and drinking decaf coffee out of those Styrofoam cups. Doesn’t he know they know much more than me? Ever the people pleaser, I said, “I would be honored,”encouraged by his enthusiasm and confidence in me. I remember perfecting the essay for weeks and proudly plopping the stapled, double-spaced essay in front of the Principal a few weeks later for him to proofread. My heart leaped in my chest as his brow furrowed upon reading the first line. I remember practically skipping out of his office in my black ballet flats upon hearing that he loved the piece. My mom and I spent many nights the week beforehand running the speech over and over again until I got every hand gesture and raised eyebrow just right. The morning of my speech, I dressed in my most respectable navy blouse with gathered sleeves paired with a gray pencil skirt and kitten heels. The speech was a dream. The words flowed effortlessly and I felt like I was born for it. My grandma came to see the speech and I think she teared up a little.  

My whole senior class came to see it too, and instead of worrying about their opinion of me, I just felt proud of myself. It felt like being weightless, like the fear wasn’t gripping me so tightly anymore. If I could push through this fear and be better for it, what couldn’t I overcome? 

As a Communication Designer, I couldn’t be more thankful that I was forced to develop good communication skills. During my two branding design co-ops at one of the world’s largest consumer goods companies, Procter & Gamble, I had the opportunity to present countless times, even to leaders in the company. Strong storytelling, varied pacing, good eye contact, and excitement behind my tone, practices that used to make me cave in on myself are now practices that are second nature. But beyond learning how to be a good public speaker, I have learned to lay down my pride. And when I feel the embarrassment of being bad at something creep up behind me again, I’ll remember that looking like an amateur for a little while is far better than the chokehold of never improving. 

“Beyond the south” is one of the possible meanings of the name “Việt Nam.” The name derives itself from Chinese characters and refers to the fact that the Chinese people saw the ancient Việt people as those beyond the southern borders of China. I did not know this in my youth, but it was something I learned much later in my adolescence as I was researching some of the history of my background. Growing up, I knew the meaning of the name of the United States of America. It symbolized the unity of the states, and the name “America” came from the name of an early explorer of the continent. Names are important; they can represent a history or past, but they can also indicate an identity, culture, and sometimes even destiny. It wasn’t until I was almost seventeen that I sought to relearn my name and, in doing so, rediscover my Vietnamese heritage. Therefore, my first step in gaining my cultural literacy was to return to my roots, where both of my parents had been born and from where they had come from across the sea. My second step was to meet all of my Vietnamese relatives in the U.S., where they had worked to integrate their Vietnamese heritage into the American culture to which they had adapted. These trips marked a rebirth, so to speak, about who I knew myself to be and about who I would become moving forward. My first lesson in Việt Nam, then, was on cloying heat, while in the U.S., it was on biting cold. 

When I arrived in Việt Nam, the heat hit me first. From the very moment my foot crossed the plane’s threshold onto the jet bridge, the hairs on the back of my neck became coated with a sheen of perspiration. We had arrived at the beginning of June, at the onset of summer. My clothes, the hoodie I had worn in anticipation of a cold welcome, stuck sickeningly to my skin as the heavy air added moisture to my already glistening skin. I had assumed (wrongly) that the airports in Việt Nam were kept as well air-conditioned as the ones in the U.S., given that the climate was so much more humid. However, that was not the case. We, that is my mother, brother, and I, were at the airport for around two hours. During that time, my head became as though it was stuffed with cotton, having expanded with the heat and moisture that had accumulated in the short period between the advent of my arrival and my would-be continued stay. I learned, during my month-long stay, that warmth was a very pervasive aspect of life. When my cậu (maternal uncle) arrived in his car at the airport to pick up my family and to bring us home to my ông bà ngoại’s (maternal grandparents’) house, I held the opinion that he did not put the air-conditioning in his car on as high as it should’ve been. I watched the outside world go by through the windows to distract myself, seeing more motorcycles go by than other cars and wondering why that was. 

The warmth continued as we reached my ông bà ngoại’s house, which looked like the townhouses from here in the U.S. The entrance was not a door but rather an open entranceway with a wide gate. I would later learn from my mother that the reason for the wide entranceway was to let outside air in to prevent the house from becoming a human oven, as air-conditioning was very expensive in Việt Nam. As I helped my cậu bring our luggage inside, my two dì (maternal aunts) had already come out to greet my mẹ (mother). My third dì was crying, having been reunited with her oldest sibling for the first time in close to twenty years. My second dì was hugging my mẹ, saying something to her in tiếng Việt too fast for me to even comprehend the individual words. My bà ngoại (maternal grandmother) had also come out, and the first thing she did was to come up to me and bring me into a warm embrace. I awkwardly received her hug, my hands hovering over her back, having not been so accustomed to such closeness right from meeting a stranger, even if they were family. My mẹ exchanged warm words with her family, nearly crying from the heat of her emotions, as my brother and I watched from the sidelines, beside a mai tree, giving my mom time to reunite with her family. She had lived up to her name, Yến Phương, which meant to fly across the world; she had flown across the globe and had finally returned home. 

The following days were filled with the same closeness and warmth. My ông bà ngoại, dì, and cậu all treated me with the same familiarity as if they had known me for my entire life instead of for just a few days. They would take me around Sài Gòn on their motorcycles whenever they had free time, and I quickly grew to love the wind flying by as my hair danced in the wind and the breeze gently grasped at the beads of sweat on my skin, taking the moisture away with a gentle gust. I knew then why motorcycles were more popular than cars; it was for the cold wind brushing past and the escape from the blistering heat. A more practical reason, my mother said, though, was that motorcycles were simply cheaper. 

For the entire trip, I watched more than I spoke. Partly because I wasn’t confident in my tiếng Việt, but also because I wanted to know more about my family and the culture my mother grew up in. It was always loud at my ông bà ngoại’s house since my third dì and her family were living with my ông bà ngoại, and their doors were always open to neighbors. Around the house, I admired the family photos that they hung on the walls with all of my dì and cậu and their families, all in harmony and no one looking out of place behind the singular clear sheet of glass. Most of them were taken during Tết (Vietnamese New Year), with mai trees or flowers in each photo. I also watched as neighbors would simply drop by just to have coffee or to speak with my bà ngoại about random, mundane topics while I was in the other room, babysitting my baby cousin (em, I called her; chị, she called me, since I was older). Despite being unable to speak with my cousins much, I understood their words and felt once more the familiarity with which they regarded me.  

The warmth ended when I left my ông bà ngoại’s house, however. Shopkeepers and other strangers outside the heat of my ông bà ngoại’s house were cold in comparison to my relatives. Stores, which were kept colder compared to my ông bà ngoại’s house, and their employees were strange and distant to me. The workers did not smile, and their words and actions were very pushy and almost aggressive in trying to get me and my mother to buy their wares. There was no such thing as customer service in Việt Nam. My mother expressed annoyance at this when we would come back home, though she expressed sympathy in that they were just trying to earn a living. One time, while we were in Da Nang, a city in central Việt Nam, I complimented a girl on her dress, and all she gave me in return was a weird look. I asked my mom if I had said something wrong, and she just told me it was because people didn’t compliment each other very often in Việt Nam. I also found the accents in Da Nang to be much harder to understand than the accents in Sài Gòn. While I found it difficult to speak, at least I could understand what people were saying in Sài Gòn. In Da Nang, however, I relied on my mother as my personal translator, though even she had difficulty understanding them.  

Unlike my mother’s family, who were from Việt Nam, my dad’s side of the family was from the areas around Da Nang. My father’s family felt much more distant from me despite having lived in the U.S. for over twenty years and being much closer to me geographically. Most of my dad’s side lived in Texas, and I had planned a trip with my dad to happen the December after I turned eighteen. My trip to Việt Nam inspired me to plan a trip to visit my father’s side of the family, and since I had not met some of my cô (paternal aunts) and chú (paternal uncles) on my father’s side, I wanted to meet them and for my dad to visit my bà nội (paternal grandmother), who he had not seen in close to ten years since she moved to Texas from Kentucky. Unlike when I had arrived in Việt Nam, it was cold when I got off the plane in Austin. It was winter, so it was to be expected, but being so far south had me assuming it would have been warmer. My cô’s house was even colder than it was outside. When we arrived, the first one to come to greet us was not my cô or dượng (paternal aunt’s husband), but Minnie, their miniature poodle, whose barking rang in my ears as I navigated the loud yet silent home. When my cô came out to greet us, it was a much more reserved welcome than the one I received in Việt Nam, with no tears or hugs. My cô and dad exchanged words (gossip, really), and I conversed with my cousins (chị, I called them; em, they called me, since I was younger). We spoke of mundane things, asking each other about hobbies and interests. Despite being able to communicate, I felt there to be distance between us, an inexplicable divide akin to that between acquaintances rather than family. 

That same day, my dad and I went to see my bà nội, who lived two houses down with my other cô. It was late afternoon as we walked over to her house, the wind rustling the leaves nearby and bringing a chill down my spine. When we walked into my cô’s house, I suppressed a shiver from the lingering cold as my bà nội and dad talked to one another. “Chào con,” she greeted me. “Dạ, con chào bà nội,” I returned, careful to remain polite. I sat on the couch beside my dad, opposite my bà nội as they spoke, and I felt as though I had been transported back to Da Nang when I heard my bà nội’s accent. Fortunately, I understood the gist of their conversation, with my bà nội asking after my father and how his job was doing, how his health was, etc., almost as if she was probing to see if my dad had finally lived up to his name, Phát Huy, which meant to achieve great success. I glanced around my cô’s house as they spoke, admiring the mai flower decorations they had put up for Tết, which was happening in January, and the family photos she placed on the different eaves and shelves. None of them displayed my whole paternal family, with each only having one of my cô and her family alongside my bà nội. The photos were all fragmented, as though each family was a pane of stained glass, all melded together to create one image. When we went out to eat with her that evening with my cô and a couple of my cousins, the restaurant we went to had, luckily, eased up on the air-conditioning, and I found myself appreciating the heat on my skin. The server smiled warmly at us as we gave our orders, and she assured us that our food would be arriving shortly. The food was warm, and despite only some of my paternal family being present, the meal was the first instance I had felt such warmth while visiting them. 

After the meal, I spoke with one of my cousins as we were waiting outside in the bitter cold. From this exchange, I learned that despite my own mismatched pieces of Vietnamese and English interspersed to create my complete vocabulary, some of my cousins only spoke English. “My mom never really spoke to me in English,” she told me as we were shivering outside of a boba shop while my cô was inside picking up our orders. I blinked at her then and came to a biting conclusion: some of my cô and chú had completely linguistically assimilated my cousins to Western culture, something my parents had tried and failed to do with their broken English. I saw my reflection in my cousin at that moment and our struggle to identify with one culture or the other, as pointed out by Gloria Anzaldúa: “Yet the struggle of identities continues, the struggles of borders is our reality still” (44). “Do you want to be able to speak Vietnamese, Sao Mai?” I asked my cousin that day. “Yeah,” she replied, voicing the words that I was all too familiar with. “I kinda wish I was able to speak it better, Yến Mai.”

The use of that name alone represents the struggle I endured while navigating between my two cultures. Very few people used my Vietnamese name, and therefore, I had always found it odd when anyone other than my parents called me by that name. Having been so isolated from my extended family, it took time to get used to being called by a name so few people knew. As such, it deserves an introduction: Yến Mai. It is the name that tied together my two experiences with both sides of my family. It is the name that all of my relatives, paternal or maternal, call me. In Việt Nam, I asked my mother, who gave me the ‘Yến’ part of my name, what my name meant. She replied, “Well, yến is a bird and mai is a flower, so I guess it means ‘the yến bird flying to the mai flower.’” When my dad and I were returning home from Texas, I asked my father, who had named me ‘Mai’, what my name meant. “It means for you to have many bright new days,” he said, correlating my name back to the mai flower’s association with Tết, the Vietnamese New Year, which emphasized looking forward to a new, brighter year. After my experiences both in Việt Nam and with my Vietnamese diaspora family, I would like to add my own meaning: rebirth and new beginnings. I brought my name with me on my journey of rebirth to learn more about a culture I had left unrealized in my youth and to begin a new journey with the singular goal of uniting the two cultures that were inherent to who I was.  

Therefore, in remembrance of these two experiences, I, Yến Mai, came back home from both trips with pictures, many, many pictures. Most notably, I was able to obtain a photo that included my entire maternal family, which a neighbor had so kindly taken for us. While I did not have such a photo from visiting my paternal family, I had a mosaic of different photos taken at different times with different members of my paternal family, most of which the servers of the restaurants we had gone to had taken for us. My time with both sides of my family had shown me two different aspects of not only family but also interactions with strangers. My maternal family, having lived their entire lives in Việt Nam, had soaked up the importance of community and regarded both family and neighbors kindly and warmly. My paternal family, who had to incorporate their Vietnamese values with the country they had come to live in, had picked up the more individualistic aspect of American ideology. I learned, too, of the differing social cultures. On the streets of Việt Nam, people did not smile, and no gestures of greeting randomly occurred between strangers. In the U.S., I would smile at random strangers on the street, and they would smile back or give me a nod in affirmation. Customer service workers in shops and stores were always smiling and happy, even if they were faking it. It was a weird disparity, I found. Vietnamese culture was built on community, but it did not extend to those outside of it. American culture hinged more on individualism, but we still showed random smiles and acts of kindness to strangers. 

For most of my life, I had been unable to reconcile these two vastly different cultures that I had grown up in. One called for community, the other for individualism. One told me to stay wary of strangers, the other to be polite. Therefore, growing up, I tried to keep them separate, as Richard Rodriguez noted in his Hunger of Memory, where he wrote, “I became more tactful, careful to keep separate the two very different worlds of my day” (47). However, after completely reconnecting with my roots and meeting both sides of my family, I think I have come to a solution. No longer do I separate my two worlds, creating a picture of unmatching stained glass panes, but I have combined them, melting them down into one whole, complete picture. I no longer strain to keep a balance between the two but have tangled them up, creating an incomprehensible knot that I cannot undo. I strive to maintain both my tiếng Việt and English, and I strive to maintain connections to my family while still seeking a connection with those outside of my community. I have visited and confronted the roots that make me who I am. I have soared across the ocean to discover where I came from. My final lesson, then, is that Việt Nam summers are hot, and Texas winters are cold, but both, I think, both together are perfect.

Works Cited

Anzaldúa Gloria, et al. Borderlands = La Frontera: The New Mestiza. Aunt Lute Books, 2012.

Rodriguez, Richard. Hunger of Memory: The Education of Richard Rodriguez: An 
Autobiography. Bantam Books, 2005.

Sleepless nights. Endless research. Rabbit holes with no answers, no bites. Uncharted territory. In August, 2020, I began to gain my independence. Forced to stay home during what felt like the never-ending coronavirus, I started to find new ways to spend my time. I grew up next to a stream called Eagle Creek and was drawn to it – exploring, contemplating what high school would be like, and hoping for an end to the pandemic. In the spring, I knew the creek became a bustling international runway for weary geese, one of many stops on their migration. I knew the creek was the main culprit of flooding in my hometown, often making the news. And, I knew if I kicked my soccer ball into it, I wouldn’t be fast enough to catch it before the current whisked it away. I didn’t know what might lurk in the creek itself – and I wanted to find out.  

Growing up fishing on Lake Erie, I already had a foundational literacy in the ways of water. I fished for walleye and perch almost every summer weekend on my grandfather’s boat. Now, I decided to expand my lake literacy to something new. I spent hours, sometimes entire days, on the creek’s bank refining my newfound love for inland fishing. I was hooked (pun intended). Every trip I caught new, foreign, and colorful fish, and with every new catch, I quickly scoured the internet to identify the new species. I used platforms like iNaturalist and FishBrain, combing through credible research papers from local universities, and YouTube videos to gather all the information I could. Identification became more than just a task – it was a puzzle that challenged my understanding of fish anatomy. Small, online communities on FishBrain and iNaturalist proved to be extremely helpful, and local fishermen served as my literacy sponsors, happy to help me learn to identify little-known species.  

As I progressed, I became literate in fish identification, developing the skills to carefully count the dorsal, pectoral, and anal fins, assess the scale pattern across the body, feel the texture of the tongue, and study the lip structure to discern the species of the fish I caught. These deep dives into my local waterways led me to discover the white sucker – a fish only understood by the most knowledgeable naturalists. It sparked a deeper curiosity, pushing me to catch it, study it, and continue to refine my skills. This foundation of aquatic research and identification was just the beginning of a much larger journey. 

The white sucker is a rare, bottom-dwelling fish that normally feeds on microscopic creek life that dwells on the rocks and weeds of swift waters. Unlike most fish, the white sucker’s mouth points downward, like a hose of a vacuum. The fish spend their day surveying their bed with sensitive noses and mouths, waiting to stumble upon a small meal. They are very fragile, timid fish at the bottom of the food chain – a regular prey of bass and pike. The white sucker’s timid feeding habits combined with their extremely sensitive mouths make it almost impossible for a fisherman to get a bite and keep the hook hidden from its sensors.  

Unlike the other species I had pursued, there wasn’t much to go on. On all of my fishing apps like iNaturalist and Fishbrain, no one reported catching one, and many claimed the species no longer lived in the area due to farm runoff. With little guidance available, I had to rely on my own observations, trial and error, and the knowledge I had gained researching and identifying earlier creek catches to develop my white sucker literacy. 

The fascinating thing about literacy is how it evolves. You could trace the origin of my eventual literacy in white sucker fishing (something very niche) to my early days fishing on Lake Erie. That foundational literacy ignited a curiosity to explore fishing in my local creek, which opened the door to a whole new realm of creek fishing and fish identification. This new pursuit led me down a rabbit hole, sparking my next curiosity – catching the white sucker. In my quest to find this elusive fish, I became literate in the specific techniques required for fishing it. 

Similarly, Lucas Pasqualin reflects on how his literacy in reading developed through an organic process, stating, “While I did not realize it at the time, these [fun learning] games and her [his mother’s] attention are probably the reasons why I took to reading as quickly as I did” (Pasqualin 2). Like Pasqualin, I followed a stream of curiosity and enjoyment, stumbling upon a literacy that would have a lasting impact. 

Once I set my sights on the white sucker, it was hard to fish for anything else. I started off, in Eagle Creek, using a redworm (which is smaller and less wiggly than a typical nightcrawler) fastened to a small hook with string line. All of this was connected to a sizable egg sinker that kept the bait on the bottom. This setup did yield bottom dwellers, some of which were even new species, but I was not satisfied. Slowly I realized that I needed a bait that a white sucker, and a white sucker only, would want; the smaller, more aggressive bottom-feeders were simply too fast for the white sucker to have a chance at the bait. 

I began experimenting – first, with corn. Although it was a step in the right direction, the corn was still too flashy, too attractive for the aggressive fish. I was constantly catching small sunfish, like bluegill and green sunfish, and carp. I harkened back to my earliest memories of science class and the scientific method. I knew I could not change more than one variable at a time, so I slowly adjusted my process to find the right combination of line, hook, weight, and bait. I needed something that would blend in, something that enticed the fish’s smell more than sight. I began experimenting with oatmeal. The bites lessened from aggressive sight-feeders so I was getting closer to my target, honing my literacy. 

I had the technical knowledge and skills needed to catch the fish, but my execution still fell short of perfect results. This struggle is common in any form of literacy. Although it is an integral step, mastery is not just about gathering information – it is about learning through real situations, making mistakes, and refining techniques over time. I had spent countless hours researching, experimenting, and testing my ideas, yet I still fell short of success – short of literacy mastery. Like any developing literacy, fishing (especially for a white sucker) required patience, adaptability, and an understanding that progress doesn’t always come in a straight line. 

In May, 2023, after almost two years of chasing the white sucker, it was time to abandon Eagle Creek and try out a new spot on the Blanchard River. I wanted to see what might live in the famous “riverbend” where the river, after traveling 50 miles north, takes a 90 degree turn to the west where it travels for another 50 miles. With high hopes in uncharted territory, I brought my new bait – now a wet mix of corn and oatmeal with a tiny piece of redworm on the tip of the hook to mask the sharpness of the barb. After reading the limited knowledge the internet could provide, I was confident this could be the spot, as suckers tend to prefer to bed (make their nests) below fast rapids at riverbends in deeper, oxygenated pools. 

After almost three hours of no bites and no fish, I finally had a bite. I was nervously optimistic about what might be on the end of my line, and sure enough, it was a sucker – but the wrong kind – a golden redhorse. This kind of sucker is more common, less sensitive to environmental change, and would be my curse for the next year. 

As May came to a close, I knew my window to catch a white sucker was shutting quickly, as early spring and summer is the species’ most active time of year. Over that summer I accidentally became a redhorse master, so much so that I became a nationally ranked sucker fisherman solely because of the disgusting number of redhorse that I had caught. 

Every adjustment I made, every time I felt like I found a piece of research that would help, every time I fished in a different river condition, I always managed to catch a golden redhorse. Although I was extremely tired of catching them, I knew they were the closest relative to the white sucker in the river. I knew I was still learning from them – and I would stay true to the scientific method. 

I never caught a glimpse of a white sucker that summer, but I gained invaluable knowledge that led me to the catch of a lifetime. In the winter that followed, I documented what I learned. I kept a catalog of the types of baits, lines, hooks, and rods as well as the river conditions and weather for all of my redhorse catches. My fishing table in the garage transformed into a research station full of unorganized notes and fishing tackle that only I understood. Many late nights were spent in the cold, dark garage lit by the glow of the street lights outside, learning whatever I could about the white sucker and its habits. 

After tasting what it is like catching a white sucker via the golden redhorse, I was more determined than ever to refine my craft and make the most out of the short sucker season in the spring. Winter barred me from fishing itself, but could not hold me back from research and preparation. In a much more literal sense, when Malcolm X was behind bars, he made it a point to spend every waking hour studying. After meeting other inmates, especially Bimbi, who took advantage of the prison education system, X became inspired by intellectual communication and expression. He desired to master it himself. 

In The Autobiography of Malcolm X, he describes his intent on mastering this new literacy, staying up past curfew to read.  

I would sit on the floor where I could continue reading in that glow. At one-hour intervals at night guards paced past every room. Each time I heard the approaching footsteps, I jumped into bed and feigned sleep. And as soon as the guard passed, I got back out of bed onto the floor area of that light-glow, where I would read for another fifty-eight minutes until the guard approached again (X 4). 

A breakthrough in my journey occurred when, while researching late into the night, I stumbled across a close relative of the white sucker that lives in northern Michigan, the longnose sucker. In The Mitten State, a small conglomerate of fishermen was specifically targeting longnose suckers. Although not exactly the same, the fish were comparable enough that longnose insights would help me achieve my target. One fact stood out; the fishermen used a similar bait compound as me, but they added Kool-Aid to make the scent more potent. Again, my literacy was being developed by others. 

After a long offseason, I was ready to implement the new Kool-Aid ingredient into my bait, and sure enough, it yielded more golden redhorse. I felt cursed, beaten, disrespected. April passed and I soon found myself in the waning days of May. My prime chance to catch a white sucker had almost come and gone again. 

May turned to June and, in the back of my mind, I had lost hope. The river was extremely low, almost devoid of movement. My chances were as slim as ever. After two hours of fishing and no bites, I had the tiniest of nibbles, thump…thump…thump. The rate of the thumps increased and with it, so did my heart rate, pounding out of my chest. When should I set the hook? How will I know when it has eaten? After three convincing tugs on the line, I set the hook, and there was something there. As I reeled it closer, I could tell it was a sucker, but it didn't look like my typical redhorse. 

I pulled it out of the water, peered through the net, and stood in silence and shock. I had done it. The White Sucker. After almost three years of failure and growth, I had achieved my goal. I was ecstatic. This was bigger for me than any other catch of my life. 

In my time as a serious fisherman, I have caught some huge fish, even some almost as rare as the white sucker, but no other fish took as much effort to catch as this prize. It was special. The sleepless nights, endless research, rabbit holes with no answers and no bites, so often in uncharted territory all led to a completely fulfilling catch. I had proven to myself, and even those on the internet who claimed that the white sucker no longer resided in my river, that they are in fact alive and well. 

Through this journey, I not only learned about the white sucker, and the family of sucker fish in general which is all too often labeled as “undesirable trash fish,” I also learned about myself. I dug deep into the depths of my patience and into any place I could gain knowledge. I learned the importance of persistence and belief in your goals and in yourself. Looking back, the fish itself was fantastic, but I am much more thankful for the journey and the development of my literacy. I found the perfect white sucker setup: a mix of corn, oatmeal, Kool-Aid, and tip of worm on a size eight hook with three pound line and a one ounce sinker. Now, I share that recipe with others. 

Today, I continue to develop sucker literacy. After my catch in early 2024, I went on to find three other species of sucker, one of which is even rarer than the white sucker. I became a “certified identifier” on iNaturalist for suckers, and am now a trusted expert in the field. I am ranked as a top contributor to the sucker family and have participated in multiple selective field research projects for iNaturalist. I suppose my literacy is taking another turn, going down a different stream; now I can sponsor the literacy of others in the fishing community. 

Literacy is a never-ending stream of fascination and curiosity. When one door is opened, it reveals countless more. Everyone is working towards a literacy. Malcolm X, Pasqualin, and I achieved our literacies, and we pass it on – Pasqualin through his studies, Malcolm X through his speeches and political activism, and me through my contributions to the sucker scientific community online. When you begin pursuing a new literacy, it is a journey to larger waterways. Knowledge and inspiration gained from sponsors and experiences lead to growth, new challenges, the opportunity to impart wisdom, and your next big thing – maybe even a white sucker. 

Works Cited 

Pasqualin, Lucas. “Don’t Panic: A Hitchhiker’s Guide to My Galaxy.” Stylus. 4.2, Fall, 2013, pp. 1-5.  

X, Malcolm, et al. The Autobiography of Malcolm X. Ballantine Books, 1992.