Picture Bride (Magill’s Survey of American Literature, Revised Edition)
At a glance:
- Author: Cathy Song
- First Published: 1980
- Type of Work: Poem
- Genres: Free verse, Poetry, Meditation
- Subjects: Family or family life, New York, North America or North Americans, Northeast, U.S., United States or Americans, Sex or sexuality, Gender roles, Nineteenth century, New York City, Art or artists, Marriage, Manners or customs, Immigration or emigration, Feminism, Women’s issues, Creative process, Grandparents or grandchildren, Painting or painters, Photography or photographers, Childbirth, Weddings, Asian Americans, Korea or Koreans
“Picture Bride,” the title poem with which Song's volume begins, serves as the seminal text of the collection, in a way defining the thematic direction of the book. In this poem, the poetic persona, aged twenty-four, attempts to imagine what it was like for her maternal grandmother, at the age of twenty-three, to leave Korea for Hawaii to marry a laborer thirteen years her senior, a man she had never seen before. The entire poem, except for the first three lines, consists of a series of questions intended to re-create not only the scenes of the departure, the journey, and the...
[The entire page is 874 words long]
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