At the end of the poem a letter from Bill Clinton is included. Do you think this is part of the poem? How is it effective to include the poem?
Smells Like Racism
By referencing the article and from what we talk about in class, what are some race and class issues that prevent Asian and Asian Americans (Asian Indians in the article) from making the obvious connection with other oppressed groups?
I think the Bill Clinton letter is almost like an epilogue to the story. Or, maybe Inada wants to use the letter to show that if one stands firm in his/her beliefs, time will eventually reveal the truth. To be honest, it took me a while to finally understand what the poem is about. Not that I don't enjoy reading his narrative of Yosh but I think the author can get to the point earlier.
ReplyDeleteUnlike the above comment, I actually really liked the poem and I understood it almost immediately. Sure the author can get there faster--but it's a POEM! It's art! It's art that tells a story using vivid language, imagery, and metaphors. I just don't think it is the readers place to say that the point needs to be made earlier. The poem itself is very effective in telling the story, and in describing the experiences of Yosh and allows the reader to practically "see" what Yosh is seeing in his drawings at the internment camp. I believe that poems like these are really one of the best methods of conveying the experiences one had growing up in an internment camp in that emotion can be almost directly related.
ReplyDeleteI think that in a sense, the letter from Bill Clinton is definitely part of the piece, the entry, the submission of this work to the book. Though I would say that it is not a part of the poem itself. This letter serves as both kind of an ending, that conveys both maybe a feeling of thankfulness as well as even possible sarcasm, depending on how the reader takes it. The thankfulness or appreciative-ness stems from the fact that it is a formal apology from the US government. However, this short letter will never be able to replace what so many of the Japanese Americans had lost... Their homes, families, belongings--they could not return to their lives even after the war.
I think including Clinton's letter contextualized the poem. It made the message a ot more concrete (especially considering how abstract the poem was to begin with). The poem speaks to the letter (regardless of whether the letter is 'listening'... which it is not) rather than vice versa. The poem informs the letter.
ReplyDeleteI agree with Jessica, that I really like how the poem was presented. It was a little more difficult to grasp the meaning (and I'm still not sure that I really 'get it' completely), but it expressed things that a single summarizing sentence could not. It added a feeling and weight to the message that prose would (most likely) not have captured...
I don't think that Bill Clinton's letter after Drawing the Line is part of the poem but it is very important to the piece to show the outcome of the tragedy and to show how the U.S. government apologized for their wrong going even though it was a small gesture it was better than nothing.
ReplyDeleteThis reminds me about the story of the comfort women who very inslaved by the Japenese government and used as sex objects for the U.S. soldiers. These women were kidnapped from their homes all over Asia and now they are fighting back. They are pushing the Korean government to apolagize for allowing the Japanese for making this women and young girls plesure objects against their will. They still haven't recieved an apology. That is way that Bill Clinton did was such a good thing and that is all the comfort women are asking for, nothing big, just the recognition from Korea for their horrible mistake.