Intro — Lisa

I am Lisa Wu and I have been teaching at City Tech since 1993.  I believe this was before many of you were born!  When I started I was a grad student and now I have children who are older than you.

My name a mixture of my two cultural identities:  American first name, Chinese last name.  I am an ABC, American-Born Chinese. Wu is a very common Chinese family name. My family name Wu is called “mouth sky Wu” because my surname Wu is written with the character for mouth on top and the character for sky on bottom.

Here is my Chinese surname.

I really don’t know how to write Chinese, how to read Chinese, and I speak a limited amount of Chinese only enough to speak in the intimate family environment.  Take me to a Chinese film, and I have to read the subtitiles!  As I get older I feel the pull of my Chinese roots, wanting to know more about the land of my  parents, the story of my parents, the history of the Chinese side of me.

In fact a surprising fact is that I grew up in West Virginia.  I participated in competitive gymnastics and was the first girl in WV to do a backflip on the balance beam.  I have had a long and arduous educational journey involving studying chemistry pre-med then dropping out of med school and wandering over to the West Coast and back East and finally landing in NYC, working in publishing, and studying literature.  It has been a long journey, but I am glad to be here.  I have enjoyed my work and met wonderful students at City Tech.

2 thoughts on “Intro — Lisa”

  1. Hello Professor Wu,

    My name is Laurencia Ofori or ‘Colon’ and i am from Ghana, West Africa. It is a pleasure to meet you and i am looking forward to learn and have fun in your English class. I am personally inspired by your self narrative, I find it quite intriguing!.

  2. Hi, My name is Sajid Hossain and I live in the Bronx. I am from Bangladesh and this my second year at city tech. I’m majoring in computer systems and I have never been in city tech yet even though, its my second year at city tech. I don’t know how to read or write in Bangla but I do know how to speak it. I have not went back to my country since I came to America in 2009. I have never work in my life but I’m planning to work as of right now I’m training for a job. English class is not my strong class as of right now this is my third time taking this class.
    My favorite subject is Math, I love math and is my strong class. My favorite sport is basketball and football. I love playing games and like to drive a lot especially long drives. My goal for this semester is pass this English class and get my GPA higher than 3.0 overall. I was like to travel places and explore new places and I like to go for late night drives and explore haunted areas or hospitals/schools.

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