I was in Year One at Lansvale Public School when I first played Chinese whispers. I was sitting in a circle of Filipino, Cambodian, Chinese, Vietnamese, Thai, and Laotian children. When it was my turn to listen, I had to ask my best friend Christopher Chen to repeat himself. Ms Bulla’s gaze squeezed me. I was taking too long. I announced my best guess: ‘Usher eats every day.’ Ms Bulla cleared her throat. “I said ‘Brush your teeth every day.’ Do you see why you shouldn’t believe everything other people tell you?’
Chinese whispers was supposed to discourage me from gossiping by showing that oral transmission is unreliable. Yet I love to gossip. Gossip gets a bad rap, and understandably so. Even when it fulfills all these functions it is more often than not false, petty, or destructive.
That’s something I’m familiar with. After Dad died, Mum ran the video store by herself. Mum and Dad’s friends visited us often. One man, Chu Dung, whose moustache and wheezing laugh reminded me of Eddie Murphy’s Doctor Doolittle, told me, ‘Your mother is a very strong woman. Always remember that.’ His wife, Co Hoa, was suss on Mum’s strength or her husband’s friendliness.
Chinese whispers was supposed to discourage me from gossiping by showing that oral transmission is unreliable.
Over the years, we saw less of Chu Dung and were invited to fewer of their backyard barbecues, a social hub for the Vietnamese-Australians in Cabramatta. When I asked why, Mum said, ‘People talk when they see a man and a woman alone.’
We were faded from the community we’d helped found. Mum, obviously, was hurt. I’d also lost a bunch of childhood friends and learnt that, in our immigrant community, there’s no-one more respected and loathed than a single mother.
Co Hoa’s gossiping was as harmful as it was unfounded. Still, when I think about it today, gossiping did a lot for Co Hoa. She solidified her trust in her friends by confiding in and speculating with them. She turned this trust into social power by excluding Mum from the community. And, most importantly, she stopped her husband from visiting our shop. Gossip can certainly be useful, even if it isn’t admirable.
Perhaps the difference between helpful and destructive gossip lies in intention.
Perhaps the difference between helpful and destructive gossip lies in intention. I’ve found it useful to relieve stress and brace myself for difficult but necessary conversations. Destructive gossip rejects confrontation and treats others as disposable. It harnesses collective ill will and demands expulsion rather than explanation.
In this binary, it’s tempting for me to think of Co Hoa as a coward for being indirect, but the reality is complicated. She was a first-generation Vietnamese-Australian housewife raising three children, and though she did not trust her husband, he was the breadwinner. The stakes were too high to have an honest conversation with him about his commitment to her. Her rumour-mongering may have been malicious in intent and destructive in fallout, but it was also a way she could disseminate information, exclude people she couldn’t trust, and obtain social power in the face of emotional and gendered economic insecurity (it’s no coincidence that the devaluing of gossip has a lot to do with its association with women).
And though the rumours about my mum were unfounded, her mistrust in her husband wasn’t: in 2012, he divorced her, went on holiday in Vietnam, and returned with a wife young enough to be their daughter.
Gossip is speculative and petty as much as it can be cathartic and helpful. By embracing rather than prohibiting the uncertainty that underlies gossip, however, I am better equipped to understand, validate, and address the emotional urgency that drives it without enabling its more destructive tendencies.
It’s not that gossip is inherently harmful or useless. People are social beings, and gossip - which I define broadly as talking about other people - is a natural way of decompressing and processing social interactions. It’s a way of coming to terms, however indirectly, with how mysterious and frustrating people can be.
As a writer of colour, exchanging information via gossip is vital to navigating industries primarily controlled by well-meaning white people.
I’ve always felt it my duty to share gossip with the right people who asked. As a writer of colour, exchanging information via gossip is vital to navigating industries primarily controlled by well-meaning white people. It’s also a form of processing social experiences, affirming trust, and passing on sensitive intel. Most importantly, it’s a way of addressing unmet emotional needs that have arisen after frustrating interactions.
Keeping a receptive though skeptical attitude towards gossip also keeps me from believing my own bullshit. When I talk about other people, it’s part slander, part psychological projection, part unmet emotional needs, and part fact. It helps to remind myself that my feelings and words will change over time. Recognising this in myself, I feel better prepared to respond to others’ need to vent without perpetuating gossip as gospel.
The same year we played Chinese whispers, I remember teaching Christopher Chen Vietnamese swears. He said, ‘Oh yeah? Do you know the most powerful swear word? It’s French. It combines all the other swear words. You say it like, “Umle doof romaj”.’ He clasped his hands over his mouth. I was impressed.
Seventeen years later, watching Cartoon Network videos on Youtube at work, I stumbled upon a clip from Dexter’s Laboratory. To study for a French test, Dexter invents a device that teaches him while he sleeps. The record, however, gets stuck on one phrase, and the next four minutes of the clip, which fast-forward through his life, all he can say is ‘omelette du fromage’.
Stephen Pham is a Vietnamese-Australian writer from Cabramatta. He is a member of Sweatshop: Western Sydney Literacy Movement.
This article was edited by Candice Chung, and is part of a series by SBS Life supporting the work of emerging young Asian-Australian writers. Want to be involved? Get in touch with Candice on Twitter
