Nick Carbo's "Directions to My Imaginary Childhood" reminds me of how people do remember their memories as a childhood. They're vivid images because that's how a child retains memory to me - through visual memory. At least on a personal level, if I closed my eyes and think back to memories, it's all based on what I remember seeing. However, what intrigued me most was why the childhood is imaginary. At the end of the poem where it says "Open the door and enter/ this page and look me in the eye" (15), it reminds me of how this memory is described to be imaginary. What am I missing here?
I was reminded of this sign when I was in Hollywood in 2010 by Hayan Charara's piece. My friend and I were walking and saw this sign so casually posted. "Speak American." What does American sound like? What does it mean to "think in American"? (231) The American Dream is a facade fed to people to believe work hard and it will get you far when you work hard and you make something to barely make ends meet. But for generations that persevere, there are generations that flourish. Similar to my parents' journey to America, they hoped for a better life and better opportunity for their kids. They worked blue collar labor so that they could feed us and push us towards higher education to escape the lives they led. They sought every opportunity to make ends meet from collecting plastic bottles and cardboard boxes to recycle and make a little extra. My mother sewed scraps of fabric for us as a kid so we'd have cheap access to pajamas. My dad learned how to fix everything so that nothing would go to waste. Even if I was born on this soil, there were people who talked down to my family and I didn't realize it until later. We had gone to the mall as a family and instead of a man saying excuse me to us, he shifted pass us and claimed "Here in America, we move to the side so people could get through." I thought, isn't it social etiquette to say excuse me in America?
Erika Ayon's "Ashes: For South Central" poem stood out to me the most because I learned about it in my undergraduate studies in a Korean American class and I remember thinking how horrendous it must have been. But, I never thought, what it would have been like to be a child and vividly witness the looting, fire, anger, sorrow, and craze. I appreciated Ayon's piece and feel like the wheels are turning but can't quite put it to words how I'm feeling in regards to my thoughts on family, childhood and place. To me, family is where children learn how to act and behave a certain way. It's their first visual learning of how to behave in society. How people treat your family creates ingrained memories. Thinking back to the struggles and horrors my family faced to get to America and to settle our family in America before I was even born, and then raise me and my siblings in America, it's hard for me to put a thumb on how that makes me think and feel. I hold so much fondness towards my childhood and my family, yet there's this pain of knowing my parents weren't able to get the same educational opportunities I received. There was a lot of struggle for them to learn and understand English. Even to this day, I serve as a translator and a teacher for certain words they don't understand. It's a bittersweet feeling and I appreciate that these pieces this week raised these feelings in me to tap into that part, think further and analyze this feeling with the past and my surrounding and how it's implemented in everyday as well as what it could potentially mean for the future that we face.
That's how I read Carbó's poem as well. It's similar to the way we remember childhood memories (in movement, in strangeness, in lens). It doesn't seem like you're "missing" anything. It's a piece that has so many layers. He's writing about his childhood and navigates us through it until we are entering the page, looking at him in the eye, which is intimate, he has given us secrets/images that capture his childhood. It's what makes it imaginary.
ReplyDeleteAyon's poem is also one that stood out to me as well. The LA "riots" are one of those moments in black history we've discussed a bunch in class/blogs. It's weird calling something like that a riot, as if it were aimless and not a rebellion planned around that sorrow, hatred of the American dream that kept shitting on their lives, shitting on other poor folks lives, a system that held folks in a sense of abandonment. I wondered what more was felt in that poem, would love to hear the writer's sentiments of how she crafted such a beautiful piece around the horror witnessed. Thanks for your insight on the hardships on this so called dream of America. There is a lot to reflect on, to be unsettled with, and to put onto the page.
Tien,
ReplyDeleteThese were great reads for you. The evocation of images in Carbo's poem pushes the way memory blurs and spits out something that feels like our invented mythologies Thank you for connecting your experiences as the family bridge in relationship to the Ayon poem. It deepens the story/picture/narrative for me
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