Reader: Giselle Hewitt

Respondent: Jacqueline Brookreson

Recorder: Terri St. John

November 19, 2002

"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

Biographical Information:

Lorna Dee Cervantes was born in1954 in the Mission District of San Francisco, California. Her maternal Mexican ancestors intermarried with the Chumash Indians of the Santa Barbara, California, area, and her paternal ancestry is Tarascan Indian from Mexico. When she was five years old her parents separated, and she and her mother and brother went to live with her grandmother in San Jose, California.  She grew up speaking English exclusively. This was strictly enforced by her parents, who allowed only English to be spoken at home by her and her brother. This was to avoid the racism and genocide, which was occurring in her community at that time.

In 1974 she went to Mexico City to the Quinto Festival de los Teatros Chicanos, accompanying her brother, who played with the Teatro de la Gente (Theater of the People) of San Jose. Realizing that they needed to add to their repertoire, the group asked Lorna to read some of her poetry as part of their performance which began her career as a known poet.  The selection she chose to read was “Refugee Ship” which renders the Chicano dilemma of not belonging to either the American or the Mexican culture. 

Mama raised me without language.

I'm orphaned from my Spanish name.

The words are foreign, stumbling

on my tongue. I see in the mirror

my reflection: bronzed skin, black hair.

I feel I am a captive

aboard the refugee ship.

The ship that will never dock.

El barco que nunca atraca.

The two collections of poetry, Emplumada and From the Cable of Genocide, are the only published works exclusively written by Cervantes. She explains that this is due to the fact that she has "never been a writer who sends out a lot of manuscripts and a lot of poems...because of the terror of rejection" (Cervantes). Cervantes is currently a professor at the University of Colorado at Boulder. She considers herself "a Chicana writer, a feminist writer, and a political writer" (Cervantes).

Course Objectives and Interpretation:

Objective 1a: Involuntary participation

Objective 3c: Mexican American narrative: “The Ambivalent Minority”

-         she struggles between her two cultural identities of being Mexican and American

-         in stanza eight she speaks of wanting to write poetry where she doesn’t have to think about the discrimination, but she also feels as a Mexican American writer she is obligated

Objective 4: Minority dilemma of assimilation or resistance

-         she wants to be a part of the whole, wants to assimilate, but she knows she can not because of racism

Objective 4b: to distinguish the theology of American racialism:  “These bullets bury deeper than logic… Outside my door there is a real enemy who hates me… every day I am deluged with reminders that this is not my land… and this is my land”

-         she is speaking of the racism that is going on in America today… saying she can not make sense of it, but racism exists… and she has to deal with it everyday even if she tried to ignore it…

Discussion Questions:

1. Why do you feel in stanza three she says “I am a revolutionary, I don’t even like political poems”, and then go on to talk about revolution and politics?

-         I feel this is the whole point of the poem… she has become a political activist by writing the poem… she may prefer write another type of poem, but if she did she would be ignoring the race war in the United States which she feels needs attention 

2. In the first two stanzas Cervantes speaks about “my land”… What land is she referring to… Mexico, America, or a Mexican community inside of America?

- I feel she is talking about a separate community inside of America… similar to the community seen in Baby in the Family… when she talks about “barbed wire politics” being torn down – looks like the class segregation within the community… and know saying they are united…

Discussion:

Giselle:  Why do you feel in stanza three she says “I am a revolutionary, I don’t even like political poems”, and then goes on to talk about revolution and politics?

Geri Spratlin: She’s ambivalent, of course and by nature not a revolutionary.  She lives as an American, feeling safe and doesn’t identify with the Mexican American culture until she is out in the world, then she feels she has to say something on their behalf.

Giselle:  She’s an authority figure, and feels obligated to stand up for her culture.

Barbara Gaietto:  I got the impression that she was switching identities.

Sara Michell: It’s a necessary evil, something she has to do.

Barbara Gaietto:  The first three stanzas are the ideal, American with blue eyes.

Dr. White:  Multicultural literature involves politics.  In the dominant culture you don’t get bogged down in politics.  She’s working on distinctions.

Diana Bassett:  She doesn’t believe it (the war) but she knows it’s there.

Giselle:  It’s contradictory because she is involved in what she says she has nothing to do with.  It’s as if this is the whole point of the poem, because it shows her inability to avoid the revolution.

Diana Bassett: In the last three lines she doesn’t condone it but she can’t ignore it unless she stays snug in her house.

Giselle:  In the first two stanzas Cervantes speaks about “my land”… What land is she referring to…Mexico, America, or a Mexican community inside of America?

Jerry Underwood:  It’s metaphysical land if the culture itself is not a physical location.  It’s all over the place.

Laura Moran:  Her land is hope for the future.

Dr. White:  The language is similar to Dan’s poem.

Giselle: She can’t write “good feeling great” poems like the rest of society; she must write these types of poems because of who she is, it’s her culture.

Dr. White:  She’s like Zitkala Sa who feels the burden placed on minority writers; they face daily truths all the time.  What about the final stanza?

Yolie Luttrell:  Reminded me of Dan’s poem.

Dr. White:  And the history.  Remember the map of Texas, Arizona and California?  Is it the U.S. or Mexico?

Giselle:  She was born in America just as I was born in America… the land is as much hers as it is mine… in fact, she has been in America longer than I have so she has more rights to the land…

Dominique Corpus:  Just because she has a lot of knowledge or intellect she can’t disregard racism’s existence.

Giselle:  But it doesn’t make sense why there is a war… We’re all people born here, with the same amount of rights to the land… as she pointed out “bullets” don’t have “logic” behind them… and you can’t “reason scars away” made by these bullets because they shouldn’t be there…

Dr.  White:  I like your connection between logic and reason in that stanza.