Li-Young Lee's "Persimmons": Assimilation and Identity

Introduction: A Poem of Assimilation and Universality

Poet Li-Young Lee wrote the noteworthy poem "Persimmons," published in 1986 in a collection called Rose. The poem offers the reader a serious glimpse into the life of a second-generation Asian-American who encountered troubling cultural challenges along the way. It speaks to how Asian-Americans were treated and misunderstood during the time Lee lived in Pennsylvania, and to the difficulty of language for a newcomer to both English and the United States. The point of view is presented by a creative narrator who wishes to expose life's push and pull — its unfairness juxtaposed with its sweetness, symbolized by the sweet flesh of the persimmon — from the time he was in sixth grade through adulthood.

The principal theme of this poem is not merely personal from Lee's perspective; it is universal. It has happened to people from Ireland, from Vietnam, and from other parts of the world, and it concerns the difficulties and prejudices that newcomers to a culture encounter when they are expected to smoothly and obediently assimilate into that new culture.

Language, Prejudice, and the Classroom

When the reader learns that the poet was slapped by his sixth-grade teacher for failing to recognize the difference between persimmon and precision, the cruelty is immediately apparent. The incident brings to mind a legacy of meanness and discrimination that surfaces repeatedly in American history and in education-themed narratives passed down through generations. Native American children, for example, were cruelly prohibited from speaking their native languages in government schools built to hasten the assimilation of Indigenous children. This same bigotry and bias has been visited upon many immigrants — whether from Ireland, Poland, Japan, Germany, or elsewhere — in the same ignorant, culturally demonizing manner that Native children were scorned and demeaned.

The history of the United States with respect to immigrants is quite different from the words inscribed on the Statue of Liberty: "Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free." Poets use words very carefully to convey larger meanings, and in this example a young Lee learned that words can bring suffering and reveal a lack of compassion when a teacher chooses to punish an Asian-American immigrant for a pair of words that sound similar but carry dramatically different meanings.

Historically, teachers are understood — by a generalized cultural definition — to be guiding, caring figures who provide enlightenment and encouragement to the young people in their classrooms. However, the instructor in this poem, apparently so limited in creative strategies for teaching immigrant children that she resorted to violence, perceived Lee as stupid. He was not only punished but intimidated and embarrassed, made to stand in the corner like a dunce. Such ignorance and lack of grace must be attributed directly to the teacher, whose bigotry and short-sightedness substituted for understanding. The educational system of that era was focused on imposing dominant white society's values and rules upon immigrants in order to hasten their assimilation.

Words, Memory, and the Poet's Mother

Other words that got the narrator into trouble were fight and fright, wren and yarn:

Fight was what I did when I was frightened, / Fright was what I felt when I was fighting. / Wrens are small, plain birds, yarn is what one knits with. / Wrens are soft as yarn. / My mother made birds out of yarn. / I loved to watch her tie the stuff; a bird, a rabbit, a wee man.

In the first five lines of this excerpt, the poet has clearly matured since that first encounter with his teacher, for he makes light of the words that once confused him. He cleverly uses fight and fright in his own context, leaving no doubt that he now understands their meanings. In the following lines, he charms the reader with stories about his mother using yarn to create wrens, a rabbit, and a "wee man." The reader's emotions — edgy after learning that the teacher struck him — settle into something mellower as he presents the context he gives to yarn and wrens. In most circumstances there would be no conceivable link between wrens (tiny birds) and yarn, but because the poet also offers a sweet and gentle image of his mother knitting, the reader moves from empathy at the memory of being slapped to a smile evoked by yarn, birds, a rabbit, and a mother's careful hands.

Describing the proper way to eat a persimmon, the narrator provides clues about his history, his assimilation into American culture, and his connection to the past. He folds his earlier confusion between precision and persimmon directly into his emotion as he precisely describes how to prepare the fruit, how to "Chew the skin, suck it, and swallow." He had certainly been forced to swallow all manner of bias and cultural rules during his early schooling. "Now, eat the meat of the fruit, so sweet, all of it, to the heart" — here "heart" functions not only as a description of how to eat the persimmon but as a metaphor for a righteousness that transcends particular cultures and speaks to all of humanity.

Conclusion: Universal Themes in a Personal Story

Several aspects of the poet's life are challenging, but these challenges are not unique to his story, because worldwide new cultures confront humans whenever they move and change. The central argument of this essay is that there is a universality to the trials and joys that all humans experience. In the case of a Chinese man thrust into a new culture, his particular difficulties are unique to his own life, but on the universal level — because everywhere on the planet people struggle to learn, people are persecuted for unjust reasons, and change brings both pain and release from pain — Li-Young Lee's "Persimmons" speaks to all of us.

Works Cited

Lee, Li-Young. "Persimmons." The Poetry Foundation. Retrieved December 4, 2015, from http://www.poetryfoundation.org. 1986.