We have read acts of truths, as much as we have written them. Natasha Trethewey uses her confusion and hurt that she experienced as pieces for an artwork that has yet to be painted. By writing Native Guard, Trethawey recreates herself like a disjointed collage. Using gut-wrenching poetry as her medium, she uses her words to represent a self portrait of her struggles, giving the reader a chance to realize Trethewey’s emotions during a time in which she had a difficulty realizing them for herself, thus helping the audience project who they believe Trethewey to be. Before showing herself to the reader offhandedly, Trethewey uses her own complex emotions to establish intimacy with the audience, as if you experience her emotions as raw as she writes them. In her poem, “After Your Death,” Trethawey seems to walk you …show more content…
However, before reaching her final and finished self portrait, she begins to form and show her beliefs with the poem “Native Guard.” While Trethewey feels alienated between both the white and black race, she finds solace in history, specifically history that has affected her directly. She writes, “Truth be told, I do not want to forget / anything of my former life,” (25). When you reach this part of the collection, it is uncertain who is speaking, or if you are the one who is suppose to be reading, but the very first line seems to sound stubborn and real, like the rest of the truths Trethewey has uncovered with her poetry. She uses a first person point of view not only immerse the reader, but to immerse herself directly within a part of history that has changed who she is today. By establishing the fact that this history is brutal, messy, and painful, Trethewey shows how pain is multigenerational and
Just as Fools Crow reaches back to the past in an effort to provide for Yellow Kidney's family, he looks to the future near the end of the novel and tells the survivor of the massacre at Marias River: "It is good you are alive. You will have much to teach the young ones about the Napikwans." He remembers Feather Woman's vision of Pikuni children, "quiet and huddled together, alone and foreign in their own country" and says, "We must think of our children." Transcending time through imagination leads to a unification of past and present, and reflecting on the roles women fulfilled in the past and their relative position of balance in contemporary Blackfeet society leads to the conclusion that it is the day-to-day functions they performed that enabled cultural survival. Tribal world-view demands attention to everyday tasks to achieve the balance needed for survival and it was the women who were grounded and provided the center for the community. The theme that James Welch has presented to us about a Blackfeet world "endangered but intact where men and women know who and where they are." Plays a big part in our own lives; we all need to find our self in this world and act upon it.
This quote describes how Louise Halfe uses all four common elements of native literature in her writings. I have chosen to discuss two of the elements she frequently uses, Spirituality and Orality in relation to three of her poems: My Ledders, She Told Me and The Heat of my Grandmothers.
Often times in today's society, we stumble upon instances of racism and oppression. About 60 years ago, innocent civilians were poorly treated and ridiculed on a day to day basis during the time of segregation. The courage and strength of those men and women was indescribable. So now we ask ourselves, what was it like? In Maya Angelou's “I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings” Maya effectively uses multiple writing strategies to bring awareness to the prominently apparent issues of racism and oppression that still exist in our society using imagery, pathos, and strong diction to craft her overall message.
Placing the poem into the final section is significant as it puts emphasis on the critical view Trethewey has of social ideals in the South. “Blond” connects to other poems in the first section, since they also deal with Trethewey’s relationship with her mother,
The construction of identity in Native American literature tends to be contingent on the trope of alienation. Protagonists then must come to terms with their exile/alienated condition, and disengage from the world in order to regain a sense of their pre-colonial life. In utilizing the plight of the American Indian, authors expose the effects decolonization and how individuals must undergo a process of recovery. Under these circumstances, characters are able reclaim knowledge of a tribal self that had been distorted by years of oppression. Through Welch’s Winter in the Blood and The Heartsong of Charging Elk, and Alexie’s Flight, we can see how the protagonists suffer from the tensions of living on the margins of conflicting societies, and that they must overcome their alienations in order to reconnect with a native identity.
Policing any community will have many challenges, but policing alongside a Native American tribe can add additional challenges other areas may not experience. In the past Native Americans have had problems with the U.S. government seriously and repeatedly disregarded Indian rights that were guaranteed in the form of binding treaties. To Native American’s police officers have been a symbol of rigid and authoritarian governmental control. They view the justice system as not to be trusted because of the breaches of treaties and contracts. With such tarnished views of the justice system and those who work for it, policing alongside a Native American tribe can face additional problems and challenges.
Connie Fife is a Saskatchewan, Cree poet who writes using her unique perspective, telling of her personal experiences and upbringing. This perspective is revealed to her audience through the poems “This is not a Metaphor”, “I Have Become so Many Mountains”, and “She Who Remembers” all of which present a direct relationship to her traditional background and culture (Rosen-Garten, Goldrick-Jones 1010). To show the relationship of her experiences through her poetry, Fife uses the form of dramatic monologue, as well as modern language and literal writing to display themes about racism presenting her traditional viewpoint to her audience.
The history of African-American oppression began in the early 1600s as slaves arrived on America’s shores. For hundreds of years, African-Americans struggled against crippling segregation, terrorism, and racial enmity to no avail. As a result of extensive physical and psychological beatings, African-Americans became fearful and very reserved in expressing their emotions. Their suffering, however, fuelled a sense of courage in some, such as African-American poets, who found the strength to address uncertainties that others had against their racial identity. These brave men included George Horton, who wrote “Liberty and Slavery”, and Paul Dunbar, author of “We Wear a Mask”. Through their powerful race-protest poetry, Horton and Dunbar portray that African-Americans feel incessantly trapped, both physically and emotionally, resulting in a deep-rooted yearning for freedom.
A person cannot change their body; therefore, they cannot change the color of their skin. Trethewey uses phrases like “cold lips stitched shut”, “expression of grief”, “language of blood”, and “muck of ancestry” in order to describe the constant verbal abuse and ignorant insults she received due to the nature of her genetics. The words of the body, which describe her physical features, are paired with the negatively connotated words to compare racism in the 70s and 80s with current racism in America. In comparison, Trethewey dissects the issue of racism by describing the lack of monuments for black soldiers as disrespect. In the poem “Pilgrimage”, Trethewey describes the lack of memorials for the Native Guard in Mississippi as a clear sign of Southern racism. Mississippi is “a graveyard for skeletons of sunken riverboats”, “hollowed by a web of caves . . . like catacombs.” The city floods with the soldiers from the Civil War, but the bodies are “stone, white marble, on Confederate Avenue.” The soldiers honored in Mississippi are Confederate generals and colonels. Mississippi distinctly decided against recognizing and celebrating one of the first all-Black regiments for the Union, the Native
In this poem, there is a young woman and her loving mother discussing their heritage through their matrilineal side. The poem itself begins with what she will inherit from each family member starting with her mother. After discussing what she will inherit from each of her family members, the final lines of the poem reflect back to her mother in which she gave her advice on constantly moving and never having a home to call hers. For example, the woman describes how her father will give her “his brown eyes” (Line 7) and how her mother advised her to eat raw deer (Line 40). Perhaps the reader is suggesting that she is the only survivor of a tragedy and it is her heritage that keeps her going to keep safe. In the first two lines of the poem, she explains how the young woman will be taking the lines of her mother’s (Lines 1-2). This demonstrates further that she is physically worried about her features and emotionally worried about taking on the lineage of her heritage. Later, she remembered the years of when her mother baked the most wonderful food and did not want to forget the “smell of baking bread [that warmed] fined hairs in my nostrils” (Lines 3-4). Perhaps the young woman implies that she is restrained through her heritage to effectively move forward and become who she would like to be. When reading this poem, Native American heritage is an apparent theme through the lifestyle examples, the fact lineage is passed through woman, and problems Native Americans had faced while trying to be conquested by Americans. Overall, this poem portrays a confined, young woman trying to overcome her current obstacles in life by accepting her heritage and pursuing through her
Natasha Trethewey is an accomplished poet who is currently serving as United States Poet Laureate appointed by the Library of Congress and won the Pulitzer Prize for her collection of poems, Native Guard in 2007. She grew up mixed race, black and white, in Gulfport, Mississippi, and when her parent’s divorced she moved with her mother to Atlanta. Her mother, Gwen, remarried and at a young age Natasha was a eyewitness in the physical and psychological abuse that her new stepfather hurled upon her mother. After graduating from high school, Natasha set off to go to school in Athens, Georgia at the University of Georgia. During Trethewey’s freshman year, her mother was murdered by her stepfather and she works through her grief by writing poetry
This blues poem discusses an incredibly sensitive topic: the death of Trethewey’s mother, who was murdered by her ex-husband when Trethewey was nineteen. Many of her poetry was inspired by the emotions following this event, and recounting memories made thereafter. “Graveyard Blues” details the funeral for Trethewey’s mother, a somber scene. The flowing words and repetition in the poem allow the reader to move quickly, the three-line stanzas grouping together moments. The poem begins with heavy lament, and the immediate movement of the dead away from the living, “Death stops the body’s work, the soul’s a journeyman [author emphasis]” (Tretheway 8, line 6). Like the epitaph from Wayfaring Stranger, Trethewey indicates that the dead depart the world of the living to some place mysterious, undefined. The living remain, and undertake a different journey, “The road going home was pocked with holes,/ That home-going road’s always full of holes” (Trethewey 8, line 10-11). Trethewey indicates that the mourning is incredibly difficult or “full of holes”, as she leaves the funeral and her mother to return home. ‘Home’ in this poem has become indicative of that which is not Trethewey’s mother, or that which is familiar and comfortable, in vast contrast to the definition of home implied in the
Louise Erdrich’s short story “American horse” is a literary piece written by an author whose works emphasize the American experience for a multitude of different people from a plethora of various ethnic backgrounds. While Erdrich utilizes a full arsenal of literary elements to better convey this particular story to the reader, perhaps the two most prominent are theme and point of view. At first glance this story seems to portray the struggle of a mother who has her son ripped from her arms by government authorities; however, if the reader simply steps back to analyze the larger picture, the theme becomes clear. It is important to understand the backgrounds of both the protagonist and antagonists when analyzing theme of this short story. Albetrine, who is the short story’s protagonist, is a Native American woman who characterizes her son Buddy as “the best thing that has ever happened to me”. The antagonist, are westerners who work on behalf of the United States Government. Given this dynamic, the stage is set for a clash between the two forces. The struggle between these two can be viewed as a microcosm for what has occurred throughout history between Native Americans and Caucasians. With all this in mind, the reader can see that the theme of this piece is the battle of Native Americans to maintain their culture and way of life as their homeland is invaded by Caucasians. In addition to the theme, Erdrich’s usage of the third person limited point of view helps the reader understand the short story from several different perspectives while allowing the story to maintain the ambiguity and mysteriousness that was felt by many Natives Americans as they endured similar struggles. These two literary elements help set an underlying atmos...
In conclusion, this poem shows the progression of desegregation throughout the south. When the poem is placed in context to the time in which it was written, it is easy to identify the injustices of African Americans. The most notable observation is when the beach is marked “colored” (Trethewey). Analyzing this poem via historical criticism allows the reader to fully understand the injustice and also experience the growth of society towards desegregation.
At a glance, the poem seems simplistic – a detailed observance of nature followed by an invitation to wash a “dear friend’s” hair. Yet this short poem highlights Bishop’s best poetic qualities, including her deliberate choice in diction, and her emotional restraint. Bishop progresses along with the reader to unfold the feelings of both sadness and joy involved in loving a person that will eventually age and pass away. The poem focuses on the intersection of love and death, an intersection that goes beyond gender and sexuality to make a far-reaching statement about the nature of being