[poem] Lost Sister (by Cathy Song)

Cathy Song


Cathy Song was born in Honolulu, Hawai'i in 1955 of Chinese and Korean descent. She left the island to pursue her education, receiving her B.A. from Wellesley College in 1977 and an M.A. in creative writing from Boston University in 1981. She returned to Hawai'i after graduating.

In 1983, Song published her first collection of poetry, [I]Picture Bride[/I], which won the Yale Series of Younger Poets competition, a very prestigious national poetry award. Song has since published three other volumes of poetry, [I]Frameless Windows, Squares of Light[/I] in 1988, [I]School Figures[/I] in 1994, and [I]The Land of Bliss[/I] in 2001.

The title poem, "icture Bride," from Song's winning collection, captures a unique immigrant experience-- that of a young woman leaving all that is familiar in Korea and coming to America to marry a man she has never met. Only through the exchange of pictures have the potential bride and groom even seen one another. The details in this poem places the Korean grandmother in Hawai'i, the bride of a sugar plantation owner and therefore most likely one of the very first Korean immigrants at the turn of the 20th century.

Due to laws that outlawed interracial marriage (which stayed in effect as late as 1967 in some parts of the United States), immigrant Asian men often married women from the home country through an official exchange of photographs. When new immigrant laws restricted the families of immigrants, barring even picture brides, from entering the country, entire communities of unmarried Asian "grandfathers" eventually died out alone.[/FONT]

Cathy Song
Lost Sister

1
In China,
even the peasants
named their first daughters
Jade―
the stone that in the far fields        [RIGHT]5[/RIGHT]
could moisten the dry season,
could make men move mountains
for the healing green of the inner hills
glistening like slices of winter melon.
And the daughters were grateful:        [RIGHT]10[/RIGHT]
They never left home.
To move freely was a luxury
stolen from them at birth.
Instead, they gathered patience;
learning to walk in shoes        [RIGHT]15[/RIGHT]
the size of teacups,
without breaking―
the arc of their movements
as dormant as the rooted willow,
as redundant as the farmyard hens.        [RIGHT]20[/RIGHT]
But they traveled far
in surviving,
learning to stretch the family rice,
to quiet the demons,
the noisy stomachs.        [RIGHT]25[/RIGHT]

2
There is a sister
across the ocean,
who relinquished her name,
diluting jade green
with the blue of the Pacific.        [RIGHT]30[/RIGHT]
Rising with a tide of locusts,
she swarmed with others
to inundate another shore.
In America,
there are many roads        [RIGHT]35[/RIGHT]
and women can stride along with men.
But in another wilderness,
the possibilities,
the loneliness,
can strangulate like jungle vines.        [RIGHT]40[/RIGHT]
The meager provisions and sentiments
of once belonging―
fermented roots, Mah-Jong tiles and firecrackers―set but
a flimsy household
in a forest of nightless cities.        [RIGHT]45[/RIGHT]
A giant snake rattles above,
spewing black clouds into your kitchen.
Dough-faced landlords
slip in and out of your keyholes,
making claims you don't understand,        [RIGHT]50[/RIGHT]
tapping into your communication systems
of laundry lines and restaurant chains.
You find you need China:
your one fragile identification,
a jade link        [RIGHT]55[/RIGHT]
handcuffed to your wrist.
You remember your mother
who walked for centuries,
footless―
and like her,        [RIGHT]60[/RIGHT]
you have left no footprints,
but only because
there is an ocean in between,
the unremitting space of your rebellion.

CRITICAL THINKING QUESTIONS
1. What value assumptions about the individual and freedom does this poem challenge?
2. The poet implies that the sister should have stayed in China. Are you convinced? Why or why not?[/FONT][/COLOR]