“Heaven” by Cathy Song
In her poem, Cathy Song reflects on the ethnic identity of her children, ancestors, and herself. The main character is a Chinese boy, who migrated to the USA for a long time before the author wrote this piece of poetry. The character worked at the railway station. He “helped to build the railroads for a dollar a day” (Song, 1988, para. 4). It seems that the boy only left his homeland in search of work and profit and always wanted to come back to China. However, he never returned. The lines that support this stance are as follows: “He had always meant to go back,” and “each mile of track led him further away” from home (Song, 1988, para. 4).
The author also notes that her grandfather (this Chinese boy) died in his sleep, “dispossessed,” “having seen Gold Mountain” (Song, 1988, para. 4). The Gold Mountain is the name by which Chinese called western regions of North America. These lines indicate that, when grew adults, the boy did not leave the USA. However, “this notion of returning” was passed through generations to the author’s son, a boy with blond hair, who dreams about Chinese heaven (Song, 1988, para. 5). It shows that the sentiment, which the main character of the poem once possessed when he was a young boy was transferred to other members of his family. It is possible to conclude that by using this poetic metaphor, Song refers to the remembrance of ancestors, while the main character, the Chinese boy, symbolizes the ethnic-cultural identity of her family because he gave the start for its development on the new land by sacrificing his dream of returning home.
“La Migra” by Pat Mora
In his poem, Pat Mora talks about the issues of cross-cultural communication and conflicts between immigrants and authorities. He provides a unique perspective on this topic by depicting the interaction between a Mexican woman and a representative of the Border Patrol in the context of a children’s play. The overall tone of the poem has multiple implications. First of all, a child’s talks about it in a casual, non-serious manner:
“…I’ve got
boots and kick—if I have to,
and I have handcuffs.
Oh, and a gun.
Get ready, get set, run” (Mora, n.d., para. 1).
It seems that the child does not completely understand the seriousness of everything he is saying as well as the implications of violence, gender biases, and harassment in his words. In this way, the author managed to demonstrate the ambiguity of the situation.
Secondly, it is possible to presume that by showing the situation from children’s point of view, Mora also aimed to emphasize the overall ugliness and seriousness of the actual problem. Although the relationships between the maid and the patrol officers are fictional and exist only in the form of the play, the fact that small children are perceptive of everything in the social environment and learn from interactions with adults and observations of their behaviors translates in this game. In fact, the children, from whose perspectives Mora writes this poem, are inspired by real-life situations and relationships between the authorities and simple people they happen to see living near the borders. In this way, by using children’s vulnerability and innocent worldview, Mora endowed “La Migra” with both ironical connotations and criticism of topical issues of social and cross-cultural inequality and power abuse.
References
Mora, P. (n.d.). La Migra. Web.
Song, C. (1988). Heaven. Web.