Turtle Soup, Marilyn Chin (1994)

You go home one evening tired from work, 

and your mother boils you turtle soup. 

Twelve hours hunched over the hearth

(who knows what else is in that cauldron).

You say, "Ma, you've poached the symbol of long life;

that turtle lived four thousand years, swam

the Wet, up the Yellow, over the Yangtze. 

Witnessed the Bronze Age, the High Tang,

grazed on splendid sericulture."

(So, she boils the life out of him.)

"All our ancestors have been fools.

Remember Uncle Wu who rode ten thousand miles

to kill a famous Manchu and ended up

with his head on a pole? Eat, child,

its liver will make you strong."

"Sometimes you're the life, sometimes the sacrifice." 

Her sobbing is inconsolable.

So, you spread that gentle napkin 

over your lap in decorous Pasadena.

Baby, some high priestess has got it wrong.

The golden decal on the green underbelly

says "Made in Hong Kong."

Is there nothing left but the shell

and humanity's strange inscriptions,

the songs, the rites, the oracles?

_______________________________________________________________________

QUESTIONS
1. Notice the author’s choice of the word “cauldron” in line 4. What images or connections does this word evoke? Why might the author have chosen “cauldron” rather than “pot”?
2. Chin refers to “the Wei”, “the Yellow”, and “the Yangtze”. Why does she reference these rivers in China? Why not include the Nile, the Amazon, or the Mississippi?
3. What is the tone of this poem?
4. ESSAY: “‘Sometimes you’re the life, sometimes the sacrifice.’” Write about this quote within the context of an immigrant family. What might a family gain or lose by moving to a new land?

ANSWER
1. “Cauldron” images the place for the mother gives all her child needs. In line 3, “‘Twelve hour hunched over the heart’, (who knows what else is in that cauldron).” The time shows the timing for the soup to cook and only mother knows what the best is for her child.  The author choose “cauldron” rather than “pot” because pot is small and it is not enough to portray the quantity of child’s need.

2. She refers to the rivers in China because it symbolizes the author’s background.  The rivers were close to the narrator. It was the historical place for China. It shows that they are the migrate family from the China. In the second stanza, “that turtle lived four thousand years, swam the Wei, up the Yellow, over the Yangtze”. The turtle soup was originally come from the China.

3. The tone of this poem is melancholy. As in the third stanza, “Remember Uncle Wu who rode ten thousand miles, to kill a famous Manchu and ended up, with his head on a pole?”, this stanza shows the sadness of the Chinese people about being obey to their believe.

4. Essay :

Nowadays, immigration has been a common world phenomenon. Migrate is an action which is move to one country or place to live or work. Usually, people immigrate to survive in their life. The people are called as immigrant. According to the quote, “‘Sometimes you’re the life, sometimes the sacrifice,’” it is clearly state that there are advantages and disadvantages of being an immigrant family.

Firstly, immigrants have to go through assimilation process. Assimilation is the process of two different things coming together to blend and in some cases, create a new thing all together. However, that is a very simplistic understanding of the process itself as there are many different types of assimilation. For instance, immigrant family will face assimilation towards culture, new idea, religion and language. For instance, in the poem of Turtle Soup by Marilyn Chin, the immigrant family just against the Chinese believe. The mother cooks the turtle soup even though the dish symbolize the luxury in Chinese culture. It is different with the United States country. In this process, they will lose several things because they live in the country as the minority. However, the immigrant family tend to learn and explore the new things that might be interesting.

Secondly, immigrants also have to face the adaptation process. Adaptation is the process of adjusting. In this case, culture adaptation is the evolutionary process by which an individual modifies his personal habits and customs to fit in to a particular culture. It can also refer to gradual changes within a culture or society that occur as people from different backgrounds participate in the culture and share their perspectives and practices. Adaptation can be occurring in several aspects such as dress, food, holidays, music and other forms of art. In this process, there is probability for the permanent residents to adapt the immigrant’s culture. Hence, this process will gain the immigrant’s family culture.

Thirdly, immigrants have the probability to get discriminate by the local residents. Discrimination is the prejudicial treatment or assumption of different categories of people toward race, religion and others. As the immigrants, they have to be patient and just follow the law.

As the conclusion, immigrants will probably go through all the process which is, assimilation, adaptation, and discrimination process. Although there are both advantages and disadvantages of immigration, people still continuously moving away from their own native land to live in some other country for have a better standard life.


GROUP LEADER : MOHD NOOR RAMDAN

Preface to a Twenty Volume Suicide Note, Amiri Baraka (1961)

Lately, I've become accustomed to the way

The ground opens up and envelopes me

Each time I go out to walk the dog.

Or the broad edged silly music the wind

Makes when I run for a bus...

Things have come to that.

And now, each night I count the stars.

And each night I get the same number.

And when they will not come to be counted,

I count the holes they leave.

Nobody sings anymore.

And then last night I tiptoed up

To my daughter's room and heard her

Talking to someone, and when I opened

The door, there was no one there...

Only she on her knees, peeking into

Her own clasped hands

___________________________________________________________________________

QUESTIONS

1. What is the mood of the speaker in the opening lines? What images suggest his feelings?
2. What is the significance of the daughter's gesture of peeking into "her own clasped hands"?
3. What does this title mean? How does it explain the closing line?
4. Why does Baraka have three short lines, separated as stanzas? How do they convey the message of the poem?
5. Why does Baraka begin stanzas with "Lately," "And now," and "And then"? What do these transition words accomplish?
6. How does the speaker feel about his daughter? What does she represent to him?

ANSWER
1. The mood of the speaker in the opening was discouragement. This can be proved by stanza one. Everything done by him looks common and uninterested. In addition, he thinks a lot. Hence, it also proven that he/she was depressed.

Each time I go out to walk the dog.

Or the broad edged silly music the wind

Makes when I run for a bus...

2. The significance of the daughter's gesture of peeking into "her own clasped hands" is, the daughter still have some hopes. it was really different with her father who just pessimistic.

3. The title itself ‘Preface to a Twenty Volume Suicide’ shows about death. It’s not about the natural death, but it’s about an action that might be happens in the stage of loose of hope because of depression. Finally, he gets inspired by his own daughter. No matter how, he have to face all the problems.


4. All the three short lines represent the conclusion for each of the stanza. “Things have come to that” summarize about his daily activity becomes uninterested to him. “Nobody sings anymore” summarize about the loose of hope. Finally, “Her own clasped hands” summarize about his daughter’s action that inspired him to not getting in suicide.

5. He begins all the stanzas with transition words because he wanted to make it as a timeline. Reader can easily understand about what he felt and what his decision was.

6. The speaker feels his daughter also can understand or realize with what he had go through. His daughter also represents an answer from God that he still get chance to change the action and as a hope that motivates him to continue his life.

REFFERENCE

Schmidt, Jan Zlotnik and Lynne Crockett, eds. Portable Legacies. Boston : Cengage Learning Wdsworth, 2009. 405.

Incindent, Countee Cullen (1925)

Incident

Once riding in old Baltimore,

Heart-filled, head-filled with glee,

I saw a Baltimorean

Keep looking straight at me.

Now I was eight and very small,

And he was no whit bigger,

And so I smiled, but he poked out

His tongue, and called me, 'Nigger.'

I saw the whole of Baltimore

From May until December;

Of all the things that happened there

That's all that I remember. 

_____________________________________________________________________________

DISCUSS

1. What is the nature of the interaction between the two boys?

2. Why does the speaker remember nothing more than the incident, even though he stayed in Baltimore from "May until December"?

3. In a paragraph compare your experience of prejudice with the persona in the poem.

4. What do its form and rhyme add to this poem?

5. What is the power of the language? What are the effects of the use of the term nigger?

ANSWER

1. At first, the persona feels was happy. As the evidence, in the stanza one, second line, 'Heart-filled, head-filled with glee'. The interaction is characterized by his friendly gesture to the Baltimorean. This interaction had been supported in stanza two, line three, ' And I smiled, but he poked out'.

2. The speaker remembers the incident because it was happens in the early stage of growth. He was 8 years old. The Baltimorean makes the boy feels guilty, oppressed, scare and feeling uncomfortable. Regarding to the Russian Physicist, Ivan Pavlov, reflexes and automatic behavior that is caused by a stimulus from the environment can affect the boy’s behavior. For instance, a boy saw a dog for the first time, and he was chased by the dog. So, it will set to the boy’s mindset that it was harmful. As the result, the behavior was manipulated. This incident will definitely give a scar to the boy’s lifetime. For this reason, he still remembers the incident.

3. In comparing the prejudice experience between the personas, I also have an experience of prejudice. It was prejudice towards religion. Pious person vs. common people. Both of them have their own misunderstood. As what I can see, it was really hard for common people to greet or being friends with the pious people while the pious also didn't have a good communication to attract the other group.  There is a huge gap between them. For me, being friends is not about religion. It is about the similarity, the enjoyment, and the understanding.

4. The form of this poem is three-quatrain ballad about the trauma of racial naming for a child. The rhyme scheme ABCB is employed here where the second line of the quatrain rhymes with the fourth. The first three lines of each have seven, six, and then eight syllables.

5. The power of language that had been used in this poem is clearly and straight mentioned about racism towards age. ‘Whit’ can be referring to the white people, which is the majority of the people in Baltimore. “Nigger “give negative effects towards the black people because in that particular time, there was racism crisis occur between white people and African-American people.

Responds to All Things Not Considered, by Naomi Shihab Nye

1. Compose your own poem in responds to/inspired by All Things Not Considered, by Naomi Shihab Nye.

    - Write 1-2 line introduction to your poem.

    - Explain what triggered the response of inspiration.

O Lord

Did you forget about us?

Remind them back

Between heaven and hell

Shows some miracle

Twist the sympathy to empathy

O Lord

We are helpless. 

I did respond to the poem All Things Not Considered by Naomi Shihab Nye because I was impressed by the author itself. As what we know, outsider claims my own religion, Islam as terrorist. Naomi is really different than the others poet because she is not prejudice towards human’s race or religion. She is seeking for the humanity for the Palestine. Palestine issue had been known well by the world, but there was no changes towards the issue. This poem will definitely open the reader’s mind and give to them empathy’s feeling towards the Palestinians’. Regarding to the poem, I would like to dedicate it to the authority. The action can only be done by them. They have the power to settle the issue. The reader could not do anything, because the authority rules the world. 

All Things Not Considered, by Naomi Shihab Nye

You cannot stitch the breath

back into this boy.

A brother and sister were playing with toys

when their room exploded.

In what language

is this holy?

The Jewish boys killed in the cave

were skipping school, having an adventure.

Asel Asleh, Palestinian, age 17, believed in the field

beyond right and wrong where people came together

to talk. He kneeled to help someone else

stand up before he was shot.

If this is holy,

could we have some new religions please?

Mohammed al-Durra huddled against his father

in the street, terrified. The whole world saw him die.

An Arab father on crutches burying his 4 month girl weeps,

“I spit in the face of this ugly world.”

*

Most of us would take our children over land.

We would walk in the fields forever homeless

with our children,

huddle under cliffs, eat crumbs and berries,

to keep our children.

This is what we say from a distance

because we can say whatever we want.

*

No one was right.

Everyone was wrong.

What if they’d get together

and say that?

At a certain point

the flawed narrator wins.

People made mistakes for decades.

Everyone hurt in similar ways

at different times.

Some picked up guns because guns were given.

If they were holy it was okay to use guns.

Some picked up stones because they had them.

They had millions of them.

They might have picked up turnip roots

or olive pits.

Picking up things to throw and shoot:

at the same time people were studying history,

going to school.

*

The curl of a baby’s graceful ear.

The calm of a bucket

waiting for water.

Orchards of the old Arab men

who knew each tree.

Jewish and Arab women

standing silently together.

Generations of black.

Are people the only holy land?

FIRST DRAFT

In the poem entitled, ‘All Things Not Considered’ by Naomi Shihab Nye, the poet describes the tone of the poem ironically by portrayed the situation of the seized country, which is Palestine. This poem is an autobiography of Naomi Shihab Nye, because her father was a Palestinian.  Through the title, diction and symbolism can make a statement that the greedy of power make people lose their sense of humanity.


            Through the title itself, they did not count any aspect of religion, races, language or culture in doing something. As we can see in the poem, the Jewish and the Arab were oppressed and received the same fate. Children also face the same fate as adult. They were suffering a lot. Children symbolized the early stage of human. They should enjoy their live by having education, playing, and etc. Unfortunately, many of them suicide in the crisis.

           
           The repetition of ‘holy’ in the poem also satire religion. All religion teaches their follower to be kind towards human. But, in this poem, they did not show any sympathy towards the Palestinians.  Power distinct people’s religion. Any new religions symbolize the hopes?  The poet keeps questioning whether there are any hopes for their future? People keep silence towards the issue. People do not have to face the problems. But, all Palestinians do not give up and always try to save their live.


           So, the poet concludes the poem by reminds to the readers to do some action. All Palestinian are waiting for helps. They cannot do anything. We are the one that suppose to help them rather than give fake hopes. Humanity is important to keep the world in peace and harmony.

Issues on Female Stereotype in Woman Poetry

Hi there! I'm just trying to learn on how to analyse female stereotype in woman poetry. It was really interesting!

1. First of all, you should know that there are four basic characters type presented by woman:
     - mother
     - daughter
     - wife
     - the mistress.

2. These roles portrayed the mind set of culture that woman should be passive, helpless, weak, illogical, emotional, passive, nurturing, caring, timid, dependent, irrational, empathetic, gossipy, homely, sweet or romantic and etc. We can see it through novels, plays, poems and movies and we are so used to them and comfortable with them that we often just accept them as true and believe that they represent the way the world really is. 

3. These following outline will help us to further identify the stereotype in woman poetry. For example :

I. The Virgin is . . .
- pure in thought, word and deed
- chaste
- angelic
- innocent
- untouched
- passive
- worshiped in a spiritual way
- religious/pious/spiritual
- comforting/healing
- life-giving
- asexual/nonsexual

Symbolically she may be described in terms of lightness, clarity, whiteness, shapelessness, with an ethereal luminescence.
II. The Seductress/Goddess is . . .
- attractive
- sexual/sensual pleasure producing
- exalted/adored by men in an earthy way
- envied by other women
- free of wifely-motherly qualities or tasks
- powerful in a limited sense can bring men to failure or also move them to great works
- somewhat evil by nature of her sexuality

III. The Mother/Wife is . . .
This role may overlap with the Virgin in its motherliness, but is seen as more worldly, more flesh and bones than the Virgin.
• When she is good, she is . . .
- submissive/totally dependent
- supportive
- life-producing/nurturing
- comforting/healing
- a workhorse
- selfless/sacrificing
- confined
- kind/sweet

But when she is bad, she is . . .
- strict/the disciplinarian/punitive
- domineering/dominating
- a nag/shrew/witch-like
- nasty/harsh
- unattractive/matronly/dull/dowdy/not very sensual
- driven (always behind her man or her children)


Last but not least, is it important to fight against the stereotypical presentation of women in literary text because texts are a model for life – novels, plays, poems and movies all affect our way of thinking about the world and what the world should be like. We should live in equality and remove the stereotypical of those gender rules.