I love poetry, and the poems we read a few weeks ago really grabbed me. This one talked about how when the author was growing up, she so longed to be white. To me, this speaks of the greatest form of repression. And we talked about this some in class. How once it's been internalized, the dominant group really doesn't have to work too hard. The oppressed group oppresses themselves, because they have internalized all these ideas- that they're not good enough, that the others are better, that this is the "right" way to be....
And I guess I just wonder if it has stopped for Nellie Wong. The poem is in past tense, talking about when she was a kid growing up. Does she see things differently now? And if so, how did she make that transition? If she can see that who she is is truly beautiful, has that been as thoroughly internalized as the things she internalized as a kid? It would be interesting to know about her life, past and present, personally, after having read this poem.
Saturday, April 19, 2008
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