Reader: Sarah Michell
Respondent: Jerry Underwood
Recorder: Kristy Cox

Linda Hogan, "The Truth Is" UA 295-296

Objectives:

5e- all writers may use common devices of human language

1c- to observe alternate identities and literary strategies developed by minority cultures and writers to gain voice and choice

4a- To identify the "new American" who crosses, combines, or confuses ethnic or gender identities.

4b- To distinguish the ideology of American racialism-- which sees races as pure, separate, and permanent identities-- from American practice, which always involves hybridity and change.

Interpretation

This poem describes the poet's feelings about being a "hyphenated American." Hogan uses many metaphors, inneuendos, and ironic twists to convey her feelings of duel identity, and despair over what to do regarding her mixed heritage. The poem searches to find out what the truth is...

Metaphors: hands and pockets, grafted tree, amnesty, the civilian conservation corps, soles/souls

Questions

1. Is there significance to the Chickasaw hand resting on the bone (particuarly the pelvis bone which is a path to life), and the white hand being empty?

2. The last stanza about the shoes: significance of the right one being the white one?

Discussion

During the discussion Jerry mentioned that having her hand on her hip could be seen as a sign of defiance. A sign that she is defiant against the world which she has been forced into, which gave her a conflicting duel identity. A woman who is Chickasaw and white. The Chickasaw hand being on the pelvis bone compared to the white hand (which is in the right pocket) having no known contents could imply that the Chickasaw culture is more fulfilling than the white culture (pelvis bone being the path to birth). Also, Hogan is sure to mention that the white hand is not a thief's hand, which is contrary to the dominant culture's perspective in which the minority is the usual suspect. She uses the hands to explain a crowded feeling about her duel identify, saying she would like to be like a "grafted tree...," but she is not. Her cultures "knock against each other at night" -- a little war imagery to remind of the past conflict between her heritage. In the fourth stanza, property is brought into the equation. According to Amanda from a previous semester, Indians did not believe in property, therefore the insult on the coins and keys which mark the dominant culture's ownership and possessive qualities. In this stanza her pockets are empty, this could be symbolic of the land stolen by settlers. The final stanza brings in an intriguing image between the soul and soles of shoes. It was brought up that shoes literally mask the foot, and that some Native Americans did not wear shoes. Again the "right one" is the white one.