American literature overview and major works

American Literature

Family in the Poems of Cathy Song

The poetry of the Asian-American writer, Cathy Song, is literally haunted by family figures and, among these, the mother seems to be the most present of all. In Song's poems, the mother figure, in diverse representations which range from the concrete to the extremely vague and airy, imposes its presence over that of the narrator herself. Thus, the identity of the author is always disrupted by the figure of the mother or another family member. In this way, Song's poems mark the identity crisis of a person that has a mixed cultural heritage and that has to rely thus on the resources of the past instead to define herself. Cultural hybridism determines thus the author to constantly turn to her family and her ancestors in need for self-definition.

One of the devices through which this identity disruption is established in Song's poems is the portrait of the mother as a young girl. In the poem Cloud Moving Hands the author creates almost a mirage in which the mother and the daughter become two superimposed figures. The mother is intentionally represented alternatively as old and as a mere girl that has only met the husband that is destined to her: "The girl who has smiled at me / from the picture on my desk / emerges, vibrant and lithe, just shy / of sixteen, a year before she is to meet my father..."(Song, 54) There is thus evidence that the author is hunted by the mother figure, as the end of the poem indicates.

The author does not merely recollect her mother in the poems, but also emphasizes the need to be remembered by her mother. This translates as the necessity to stay in touch with her past. For this, significantly, in the same poem called Cloud Moving Hands, the author claims recognition and remembrance from her own mother. By reversing the arrow of time, Song presents the mother as an old woman first, then as a young one, and finally in the end, she sends her home: "Everything is as it should be. / I stroke through air, / I fly through water, / I send my mother home."(Song, 54) Thus, it can be said that the author dismisses the figure of her mother only after it had served its purpose, namely to create the connection with the past. The conclusion that everything is "as it should be" ironically points to the reversal of notions and roles in the text.