10. Hogan's use figurative images through the use of metaphors and similes are compared to herself and to her ancestors explain her heritage. In the first stanza she uses the metaphor of a mirror to say that she looks like her mother: "From my mother, the antique mirror/ where I watch my face taker on her lines" (1-2). The lines on her face are obviously wrinkles but they could also represent the hardship that brought on those wrinkles. Hogan is simply sayinf that her life reflects her mother's in the sense that they have seen hardship. "From my father I take is brown eyes/the plague of locusts that leveled our crops/ they flew in formation like buzzards" (7-9). Buzzards are definably a symbol of death. Brown is a natural and dull color. Hogan is saying that her eyes have grown desensitized to famine, hardship, and death like her father. In lines 28-30 she says "It was the brown stain/ that covered my white shirt,/my whiteness a shame" Here white shirt is a metaphor for here innocents and the brown stain a loss of that innocents. It also suggest that she is ashamed of half white. Line five supports this idea of being ashamed of being a half blood " she left the large white breasts that weigh down my body". Being two different races makes her feel disconnected and connected to her family at the same time because Indians are people that have not home. "From my family I have learned the secrets/ of never having a home" (44-45).
11)Yes literally Hemphill is present in the pictures, but he is only there to fill the gap of where he should be in is family. He is fulfilling his commitment to his family by being there, but he feels invisible because even though he is present his family does not really see him for who his is. They only see for who they expect him to be. "My arms are empty, or around/ the shoulders of unsuspecting aunt/ expecting to through rice at me someday" (16-18). They are expecting him to live a normal heterosexual and it seems as though they are unaware of his homosexuality. He has not yet come out to his family in the poem, and his homosexuality is invisible, thus he is invisible with him. "I am the invisible son./In the family photos/nothing appears out of character/ I smile as I see my duty" (32-35). He is present in the family life as being normal but no one sees him for who is really is.
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In commitments, I would say that Essex Hemphill tries to remind us that "blood is thicker than water". Hemphill shows to us that he has even if he is not comfortable of being somebody else other than himself, he still wants to keep his "commitments" to his family as the ones who comes first in his life. At that time, not too many gay people go out in the open. I also think religion and culture are factors for the decision to have "family" come first and stand as a shadow of who he really is...
ReplyDeleteThe "unsuspecting aunt/expecting to throw rice at me someday" means that aunt or family still expects him to get married someday...throwing rice happens at the end of a wedding.