Family & Narrative

This weeks readings were heavily rooted in family stories and tradition, or the subversion of tradition. I connected with various pieces from three of the writers, Nick Carbo, Jennifer Chang and Oliver De la paz.

Carbo and Chang had threads of commnality which hemmed their work closely together. We were supposed to analyze how these poems evoke family in a different way, but the portrayals of the families in Carbo's poem "American Adobo" and Chang's "The Sign Reads" feel very familiar to me.

Both poems are filled with images of distance and solace within the family. A line from Carbo's poem readsL

This was a chance to ignite

memories from familiar names, to recuperate
the fallen leaves of our family tree, to run
back to our childhoods, separated

by two continents and an ocean.

Then from Jennifer Chang's piece:

I used to wake in my childhood home

and want my family to burn, with me
as the flame's blue dart.
They are embers now

or could have been.
Sister pooling on the kitchen tile,
her formless anger
forming my current burden.    Don't I lie
each time I promise
I did not leave her behind

Both of these families are broken in one way or another. The family in Carbo's piece functions in larger terms where numerous members of the family are on different continents. Which (if I take some liberties of close reading and assumptions) would mean there's a gap in traditions and cultural identity within the family. This could cause division and misunderstandings/miscommunications within a family who are trying to reconnect.  Chang's piece is a narrower look at a fragmented relationship between the narrator and her immediate family. We aren't provided with the back-story (which I would personally love but don't necessarily need) but the narrator recollects wanting herself and her family to burn in their home, probably as a way of escape form whatever the family was going through at the time. And the narrator's relationship with her sister is volatile and she feels guilt for leaving her behind in the family drama. These stories feel extremely tangible to me. I know families going through similar situations, and my own family has had its share of fissures along our familial line. 

I was also drawn to Oliver De la paz's structure of his narrative poems about young Fidelito who was " all aura and golden, though pierced with the spit of the faithless."  (De laz paz's characterization is AMAZING by the way) I was intrigued by his titles of the individual narrative blocks which seem to flow as part of the actual stories. There's a strong narrative arc to his pieces as we are spectators gazing in on Fidelito's world living in a new place, adapting to a new school, and connecting to the natural elements instead of with the children who seem to ostracize him. I appreciated the richness of the story being told of this family and I felt a bit haunted by some of the imagery, and as mentioned above, the description of the characters within the family. De la paz has some great lines which created an emotional bond between myself and Fidelito. I felt as if I wanted to protect him, much how his own felt while keeping secrets from him. (secrecy- another family trait that I can relate to).

While many of these poems were a bit difficult for me to enter and grasp what was going on, the three writers that I mention here provided access in to the lives, thoughts and emotions of these families who may look different from mine, and may be physically located in a different area from mine, but we all do share certain things in common.