Reader: Kim Gram

Respondent: Jared Sloan

by

(Afaa) Michael S. Weaver

Unsettling America, pp. 227-28

Course Objectives:

Objective 3: To contrast the dominant "American Dream" narrative with alternative narratives.

"If I ever wonder where

America’s heart is, I have only

To come to my neighborhood"

Objective 4: To register the minority dilemma of assimilation or resistance.

"One of my neighbors was

a black man released from jail"

Biographical Information:

Michael S. Weaver, now known as Afaa Michael Weaver, was born November 26, 1951 in Baltimore, Maryland. He began studies at the University of Maryland at the age of sixteen. He stayed there two years before beginning his fifteen years as a blue-collar factory worker. From 1980 to 1993, he wrote as a freelance writer for the Baltimore Sunpapers. In 1985, he received a contract for his first book, Water Song, received an NEA fellowship, and left the factory to attend Brown University. He later received his M.F.A. in Creative Writing. He has also written plays, the first of which was a play called Rosa, which he wrote as his graduate thesis. Afaa is now the Alumnae Professor of English at Simmons College. (aalbc.com/afaa.html & poets.org)

Interpretation:

Each stanza describes the struggles of a person or group within a neighborhood in West Philadelphia. Like a sonata that contains several different measures with unique tempos, each stanza has a story of its own. However, the measures come together as a whole to produce a composition. In the same sense, the stanzas have a common theme that brings them together as a poem. The common tie is the injustice suffered by African Americans who have not received their portion of the "American Dream."

Style:

• Free Verse
• Poem that reads like prose
• The allusions and similes that refer to the sun and the tiger produce a deeper meaning and greater sensory stimulation that can not as well be achieved through prose.

Question: What is the significance of the poet’s repeated references to the tiger, and how does it relate to the references to the sun?

The class developed an interesting discussion that brought out a number of different ideas and possible interpretations of the poem. Due to the diversity of the comments, I chose to arrange this section by bullets rather than attempting to mesh it all into paragraphs. I hope this organization is more beneficial for understanding. (Each bullet indicates a different speaker)

• I thought of the tiger as being caged in a zoo and wanting to be free in the sun. The tiger is an aggressive animal that causes others to be careful and try to protect themselves.
• The tiger can not walk along in peace. It is in a dominant role in which it searches for a weakness in others. (Jared Sloan, respondent)
• The speaker is walking slow and heave like a tiger. Others are looking to see if the speaker is a tiger like them. At the end of the poem, he discovers that he is also one of the tigers.
• Throughout the poem, the speaker seems separated from the culture, but at the end he speaks as if he is part of a whole.
• Weaver cleverly chose the description of fire as yellow in order to be less suggestive. I think of the fire as being something that consumes which reflects the people in the poem who have been consumed by society.
• The extended metaphor of the tiger image is reinforced by the images of the stripes created by the sunlight. The stripes imply the skin color as well as the coat of the tiger, which stands out. The stripes can also refer to the idea of the jail scenario, which views blacks as fugitives or criminals.