Nice Work, WINKY!

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Then again, these are Western values talking. We may appreciate the names because they seem rebellious or subversive, but they may be subverting more than their own culture. Language is an instrument of power, and it can be challenged from the bottom up by something as simple as a name. The ability to choose or even create one's own name is empowering, especially in the process of negotiating a new language ('the international business language') and the new ideals that come with it. Names like Genius Jeffson, Ice Wolf, and Celery turn the English language upside down and inside out, simultaneously deconstructing and celebrating it. They're playing with 'our' language until it is 'their' language too, and are carving out elastic new identities for rapidly changing China. Every day, in classrooms across the nation's 23 provinces, these students turn morning roll call into pure, surrealistic poetry.

Reprinted from the BlowUp (Fall/Winter 2006). Subscriptions: $30/yr. (2 issues) from 60 E. Ninth St. #404, New York, NY 10003; www.theblowup.com.

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