“When I discover who I am, I will be free.” ~Ralph Ellison
With a cultural identity as unclear as her own, Sarah Howe grew up questioning the human condition, specifically regarding the idea of belonging. Yet despite her great efforts in discovering what it means to have a bicultural heritage, her journey of understanding is forever ongoing.
This journey and thirst for belonging inspired her poetry book Loop of Jade.
Howe begins her book with the poem with Mother’s Jewellery Box. The poem acts as a gateway to the main topic discussed in her other poems: the relationship between her and her Chinese heritage. By providing context for the rest of the poetry book and through the use of stylistic features, Howe is able to enforce the idea of a spiritual journey.
In order to fully understand the poem, one must understand the context. Sarah Howe grew up in a bicultural family with a Chinese
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For the “silver chains” in stanza 3, she uses punctuation. In the second line of the stanza, she writes “careful o’s and a’s”. Howe chooses to use apostrophes instead of quotation marks, which would be more appropriate for the literal sense of the phrase. By using apostrophes she is emphasizing possession: possession of the necklace and possession of her identity. The significance of the letters - ‘a’ and ‘o’- is uncertain, possibly inferring that her poetry is to an extent esoteric.
The next stanza employs careful word choice and a rhyming couplet to bring attention to her neglect of her Chinese identity. “twisted” immediately denotes something that has been left to itself for a long time or something that is not kept well. Her choice of the word “flattened” is yet another example of her suppressing her oriental heritage. The rhyming couplet in the lines “flattened beads/lupin seeds” to further emphasize the
For he then even attempts to “teach” Donna Chinese, but cannot remember certain words. He does, however, remember “to tell her she is beautiful as the moon,” which is not a typical compliment an American male would give. In this stanza, the speaker’s Chinese heritage is actually coming in handy, a thought that probably never crossed his mind when he could not differentiate “persimmon” from “precision.”
The children are unnoticed by others and the mother is the only one that is protecting them. This poem shows the hard times that the mother must face because her children have died. However the mother is coping with them while still protecting her children after they have died, This is the mother's way of coping because she is not yet ready to let go of her children and still wants to care for them. This poem shows this through nature by portraying the mother as a bird who is protecting her nest. Also the poem uses nature by describing the harsh times as a winter wind that has caused harm to the mother and her children.
Li-Young Lee is a poet who has written numerous amounts of work. He is a writer of Chinese heritage, but he does not classify himself as an Asian American poet. According to an article titled, “Li-Young Lee,” Li-Young Lee refuses to classify himself as an Asian American writer because he strives to be a “global poet.” This statement demonstrates that Li-Young Lee uses poetry as a means of addressing universal concerns. He writes about experiences or lessons that are personal to him; however, these are experiences and lessons that people all around the world can relate to. Li-Young Lee specifically writes about his childhood memories and family. A particular poem that reflects his personal life and poetic writing is, “The Gift.” In “The Gift,” the use of vivid imagery, free verse, and a distinct tone portrays Li-Young Lee’s poetic style.
In stanzas 4-7, Howe continues to describe her intimate relationship with the girls. There are connections in the words: kissed,
The poem “The White Porch” by Cathy Song is an illustration of maturity and coming of age. There is an innocent tone to the beginning of the poem with sensual undertones as the writing progress’s. In the poem, a woman is reminiscing about her young womanhood as she sits on her porch awaiting her presumed lover. Song creates the character of the woman to be of a homemaker, describing her duties taking care of laundry, having a cake in the oven and snapping beans in her lap. Through the visualization that Song creates it is assumed that the woman is pregnant, and as she is waiting for her husband she thinks back to the things she herself used to do when she was younger with her own mother. She is reflecting on the way her mother raised her thinking about how she wants to raise her own child. The speaker admits to sneaking in her lover late at night behind her mother’s back, but does not seem to feel remorseful because all her decisions led to where she is in her life now. Cathy Songs poem “The White Porch” portrays the transition of a girl into a woman using symbolism, imagery and simile.
Earlier on in the poem we are told that the son and father come from very different cultural backgrounds, but it is only in the last three lines of the part I
In a world where seven billion people can communicate in fractions of a second across the globe, share thoughts and exchange cultures, the way we choose to identity ourselves can often ‘’mark’’ us. You can often tell a lot about someone who proclaims to be Quebecois before being Canadian. And theses thing are often present in areas that have a clash of cultures, such as Québec in the former example. But the author Thomas King dives deeper into the subject with his short story Borders. King’s characters do not attach themselves to the place they were born, instead they take pride in their parents’ legacy, their heritage. By writing through the eyes of a twelve year old boy and using opposition, King displays the importance of such things and how minorities are slowly losing them.
The depiction of the struggles of motherhood in both poems evokes feelings from the audience of sympathy and appreciation for their hardship. Instead of showing motherhood as a stereotypical ideal and being an intrinsic source of happiness, Bruce Dawe and Gwen Harwood suggest that motherhood and the duties surrounding it can lead to despair. ‘Up the Wall’ portrays the struggles through visual imagery and negative connotation and expresses the mental toll and frustrations of maternal responsibility through dialogue. “The kettles plainsong rising to a shriek” represents the tension in the home and the mother’s frustrations and anger reaching its limits. The use of “always” in the second line demonstrates that there is no respite from domestic rituals and that she is in a constant routine.
In her text Tseng uses the formal element of the text effectively to communicate her experience regarding ‘home’. Each stanza of her poem is formed with 2 lines: 1 print, and 1 italics. Tseng goes back and forth between the print text and the italics to communicate how she communicates her home to others, and how she remembers her own home. Through this action she seems to counteract her perception of her home between how she tells others and how she remembers. Tseng starts off the poem with a line that seems to give no importance to her birthplace, “My birthplace is incidental.”(Tseng) She then continues under in italics and state, “Never forget your Mother Country”(Tseng) which hints her true feelings towards her birthplace and reveals a sense of nostalgia. Throughout the poem she accepts the stereotypes that americans, and outsiders place on the chinese in print text. She simplifies her journey to United States, and life in United States and then she continues to reveal the truth behind the first statement. The poem is a constant battle between the facade she puts on, and the actual author behind the facade. In her poem she talks of her experiences and homeplaces as if they are of no importance in the print text, but you can see that in the italicized text that they are the foundation of who she is today. In the last three stanza of her poem Tseng discards the Print text and stresses her true experience of her hardships, and the journey. In these last texts she creates a very vivid images of couple of her nights on the boat that she was on to get to United States. The last lines of the poem shows that her journey was truly a life or death
The use of symbolism and imagery is beautifully orchestrated in a magnificent dance of emotion that is resonated throughout the poem. The two main ideas that are keen to resurface are that of personal growth and freedom. Furthermore, at first glimpse this can be seen as a simple poem about a women’s struggle with her counterpart. However, this meaning can be interpreted more profoundly than just the causality of a bad relationship.
Meet Rachel, a sophomore studying at Howard University who is also mixed with both black and white. Rachel transferred to the Historically Black University from a Predominantly White Institution because she felt as though she was not “white enough” and Howard would better suit her. Unfortunately upon her arrival, Rachel could not help but feel as though she was not “black enough” to attend Howard University. Rachel’s feeling of not belonging are not isolated, they are shared by millions of biracial Americans who, at one time or another, felt as though they did not belong to either culture. These feelings have been brought on, over time, by the way, America, although believed to be a “melting pot” of cultures, often wants people to categorize themselves as one ethnicity and the pressure placed on Americans to solely identify with one race divides the country more than anything else. The only way to rectify this problem is for Americans to stop separating themselves into racial categories and come together to be classified as simply American.
Leslie Marmon Silko’s novel, Ceremony, reveals how the crossing of cultures was feared, ridiculed, and shunned in various Native American tribes. The fear of change is a common and overwhelming fear everyone faces at some point in their life. The fear of the unknown, the fear of letting go, and the fear of forgetting all play a part in why people struggle with change. In Ceremony the crossing of cultures creates “half-breeds,” usually bringing disgrace to their family’s name. In Jodi Lundgren’s discourse, “Being a Half-breed”, is about how a girl who struggles with understanding what cultural group she fits into since she is a “half-breed.” Elizabeth Evasdaughter’s essay, “Leslie Marmon Silko’s “Ceremony”: Healing Ethnic Hatred by
After reading the Literal translation one might be fairly in touch with the poem and
Imagine being an outcast or an alien from a different galaxy that had to settle on Earth. It’s unbearable having the constant feeling of not belonging in this world because you are different; however, having no other choice but to be strong and overcome it is an even more difficult thing to do. The unsettling feeling of not being accepted for who you are, and the strength needed to overcome it is represented in the essays, “How to Tame a Wild Tongue”, by Gloria Anzaldúa, and “How It Feels to Be The Colored Me” by Zora Neale Hurston. Though they are not based on aliens from another galaxy, these two texts are based on two strong women who were alienated from society because of their backgrounds. Though they give
In this stylistic analysis of the lost baby poem written by Lucille Clifton I will deal mainly with two aspects of stylistic: derivation and parallelism features present in the poem. However I will first give a general interpretation of the poem to link more easily the stylistic features with the meaning of the poem itself.