Significance of Place in Spite of Family

When I read these poems I didn’t get a strong sense of family, not in the blood sense or in the constructed sense. To clarify I consider family any community of people you construct that give you the space to define yourself in relation to them and that’s not something I picked up on here. More than anything else, I got the idea of home. Where you come from, how you’re raised and the effect that has on who you become and how you see yourself in relation to the rest of the world because in one poem you have someone who’s displaced (“If Bubba’s Taxi Could Talk”) and another where being is manufactured (“Thinking American”) and both of these poems leave me with a feeling of detachment from childhood and family, yet a connection (however small) to a place (though not necessarily a home)

In “Thinking American” you are walked through the production of identity through the environment. It’s Detroit [insert all assumptions about Detroit] and we’re told that in this place specifically, boys are manufactured - not grown, not nurtured - into men, you learn how to survive but not necessarily live and that existence is by Charara’s words, “miserable.” But it’s not Detroit, maybe for them it’s Detroit, but it’s anyplace. Anyplace where you will be pulled from the womb onto the streets. Something you want to escape, as it is implied and while it can be considered a criticism, it certainly doesn’t seem an entirely negative portrayal. The point seems to be, no matter where you come from in America you will always be a product of this mindset and this place and it sucks so badly that you always want to leave the place that made you.

An interesting point is that the poem suggests that even if escape is on the brain and the life is terrible, it’s the one you’ve been given and there are ways to cope. Considerably self destructive ways, mind you, but ways that seem to fit into this crappy environment that’s raised you. It’s not at all constructing a family or reminiscing on childhood, but it’s acknowledging the place where you come into being. There’s significance tied to the place.

The same can be said of “If Bubba’s Taxi Could Talk,” the difference being the significance of not having a place to be tied to. In Razor’s poem there’s no explicit past, only what the narrator can carry in 100lb backpack. Here, there’s a very strange sort of happiness that I feel is given from the get. Despite being presumably homeless or without a place, the person of this poem is happy with the change, this lacking isn’t presented as an obstacle but rather a fact of life as though (presumably) this has always been the case for them.  They’re carrying what they have left to call their own, which implies that they had a place but the positively or non negativity towards constantly moving and going, tells me that the lack of connection isn’t important to our narrator and has in some ways shaped who they are or want to be.

It’s the creation of self through the construction or absence of a place; rather than through a familial tie and I think that’s an important aspect to childhood or growing because as much as a family creates you, your environment produces you and both of pieces explore this part of identity.