October 19, 2000

"Poem for the Young White Man

Who Asked Me How I,

An Intelligent, Well-Read Person,

Could Believe in the War Between Races"

by

Lorna Dee Cervantes

Unsettling America, pp. 248-249

Lorna Dee Cervantes was born in 1954. She is the author of From the Cables of Genocide: Poems on Love and Hunger (Arte Público Press, 1991) and Emplumada (1981), which won an American Book Award. She is also co-editor of Red Dirt, a cross-cultural poetry journal, and her work has been included in many anthologies including No More Masks! An Anthology of Twentieth-Century Women Poets (ed. Florence Howe, 1993), and After Aztlan: Latino Poets of the Nineties (ed. Ray González, 1992). In 1995 she received a Lila Wallace-Reader's Digest Writers' Award. She lives in Boulder, Colorado

Objective 1a: Involuntary (or forced) participation

Objective 3c: Mexican American Alternative Narrative: "The Ambivalent Minority"

Objective 6: Observation of images of the individual, the family, and alternative

Families

Ms. Cervantes introduces a dichotomy unique to the minority experience, specifically the Mexican American "Ambivalent Minority". She does this through juxtaposing the world of her imagination versus the world of reality. Her inner universe is peopled with gentle beings speaking kind words, where poets are exalted and art is revered. Reality, however, is vastly different. Right outside her door, it is violent, brutal and cannot be reasoned away.

The tension introduced through the image of the two worlds in constant opposition is sustained throughout the course of the poem, until it breaks free with her concluding response to the Young White Man’s question.

Racism, according to Ms. Cervantes, is not a question of intelligence or belief. Those two ideals are not integral to the existence of prejudice. Hate, she tells us, doesn’t need a personal endorsement. It’s doing just fine on its own.

Explore the conflict evident in the lines "I am not a revolutionary." And "I believe in revolution". How can she believe in a thing, yet not be part of it?

If every word a poet chooses is weighted with meaning, what do you suppose is the significance of the words "Young White Man" in the title of the poem?

The discussion which followed the presentation was interesting. Students offered a variety of interpretations of Ms. Cervantes’ poem.

In Jared’s comment on Stanza 4, he felt the author was describing the white man as believing his actions to be wrong. Whites are not the ones being shot at, but the ones doing the shooting. Whites do not have crosses burning in their yards because they are the ones setting the fires.

Judith remarked on the theme of ambivalence in Stanza 8. She felt the author was making a statement as to her feelings of being apart from the other members of society. Judith saw the narrator as a character behind the scenes, holding back as a revolutionary. She believes in change, but has to step back from it.

Diane added this insight. The author is acting as a revolutionary by being involved in the war through her poetry.

Nancy Gordy was the respondent and had this to add to the presentation:

In Stanza 3, Nancy saw a "cynical reaction underlying the idea that the narrator has to believe in the war because it is unavoidable and obvious". Stanza 4 continues the theme of standing out among the dominant culture with the line "they are not shooting at you". In Stanza 6, Nancy noted, "Racism is not intellectual, not even intelligent. It is being biased and ethnocentric, not very adapting. Intellects tend to stand back and look at the situation, not involve themselves in it". In Stanza 8, Nancy pointed to the line "This is not my land, and this is my land" stating "it is a confusion about being brought here or taken over, yet not accepted into the culture".

(Quotes are from Nancy Gordy’s respondent notes).