Family and Childhood

I think that for many people who have had to spend their childhood figuring out who they were in relation to world events and social constructs instead of “[running] over a clouded beach to play at Junior lifeguard” (Bermejo 39), recalling childhood is almost always trying to reconstruct it.  Trying to figure out if any of our perceptions about life and relationships were too sheltered or made us too jaded, many people have to also reconstruct their idea of family as they get older.  In “The Boys of Summer”, Bermejo grinds the privileged westernized very white construction of what a summertime should be.  An “American” summer is supposed to be filled with fun in the sun, beaches, swimming pools, laughter and the nationalistic mess that is the Fourth of July.  Bermejo shows us two counter narratives, one of a boy crossing the border and one of boys in Gaza being blown up while playing soccer.  Bermejo gives us sort of a three tiered situation, the first is what I assume to be a very privileged white boy, the second a young Latino boy crossing the desert in a pretty desperate situation, but who still has hope in his heart in spite of his odds of survival.  The Palestinian boys are just trying to play some soccer and are completely demolished, their chances of living healthy lives seem very diminished.  This made me examine how similar the situations between the Palestinian boys and the Latino migrant boy are.  However, the Latino boy, “alone in the desert” imagines a hopeful situation while we don’t even get to know the last thoughts of the boys who were presumably trapped on one piece of land with many others and unable to escape before they were blown up.  All we know is their parents blame themselves “because they couldn’t give their boys a safe place to play” when in all actuality I am sure these parents would have been able to were their land not militaristically occupied (Bermejo 39).  

Another poem that I felt particularly spoke to reconstructing childhood is Nick Carbo’s “Directions to my Imaginary Childhood.”  He takes us to Manila, Philippines where French and Spanish colonial words along with Catholicism intersect with Tagalog to create the cities and islands of the Philippines.   I think the essential thesis of the poem is “I’ll give you a bunch of clues about who I am and if you can remotely decipher their intersections you can ‘open this door and enter the page and look me in the eye’” (Carbo 15).  Identity, this childhood is laid out as so complex, multifaceted and full of confusion that to understand it you must have lived it.