Reader: Jerry Underwood
Respondent: Annie Ramirez
Recorder: Jody Newmann

Linda Hogan, “Heritage,” UA 284-286.

Opening: The author of the poem has no physical home because her father was in the army and they moved a lot. Her mother was white and father was a Native American.

To me, the poem read similar to a will with the speaker receiving each of her senses from one of her family members. she received touch from her mother, sight from her father, smell from her uncle, hearing from her grandfather, and taste from her grandmother.

Not only has the speaker lost her family, she has also lost her tradition or is in danger of losing her tradition. In the 3rd stanza, she is "told not to remember" but learns the old ways from her uncle anyway. She has also lost her own identity in being an amalgam of two cultures and ends up juggling both. She sees how others view her mixed parentage and voices it in the 5th stanza: "It was the brown stain/that covered my white shirt,/my whiteness a shame."

The speaker has also realized that she will never be fully accepted by either culture. In the last two lines, she states, "From my family I have learned the secrets/of never having a home." Not a home in the literal sense but that of a cultural home that is sometimes east and sometimes west.

Objectives: 2 representation of self and cultural representation of time. There was a disruption in culture with the father joining the army and not allowing the speaker to learn the old ways

3b theme of loss and survival

6a individual and family

Question- What did you think of the poem?

teacher: "Gross."

Jerri: There was no baby food in the old days and people chewed food for babies similar to the chewing of tobacco by the grandmother.

Jerry: Tobacco is from the earth and by putting it in her mouth the grandma is orally transferring tradition or the earth traditions on to her grandchild. The uses of brown; eyes, skin, earth, oil, saliva, grasshoppers.

Sara: The grasshoppers and locus are cycles of the earth that the narrator can depend on.

Jerry: There was a rift in time that can be compared to the time break in Baby of the Family both Lena and speaker learn traditions from grandmothers.

5 different senses

mother: touch

father: vision

uncle: smell

grandfather: hearing

grandmother: taste

teacher: agrees

Kate: She gets her sense of self from her parents.

Terri: She does have a home because her family is her home.

Teacher: Native Americans can lose and still maintain their identity.