Student Question
What is an analysis of Marilyn Chin's "We Are Americans Now, We Live in the Tundra"?
Quick answer:
The narrator's ambivalent attitude toward his home country is shown in two ways. The first is the paradoxical nature of China being both beautiful and fragile, symbolized by the giant begonia, which can be both beautiful and "bitten." The second is that although China is beautiful, it may not be possible to live in a country with so many insects."We Are Americans Now, We Live in the Tundra" is a poem by Marilyn Chin, first published in 1987. The poem is narrated, in the first person, from the perspective of an immigrant in America, who has ambivalent attitudes toward the country they came from, China, and the country, or city they now live in.
The opening lines, "Today in hazy San Francisco, I face seaward / Toward China," capture the sense that the speaker is caught between two places. They are physically in San Francisco but a part of them longs to be back in China.
The narrator describes China, metaphorically, as "a giant begonia," a plant found in the southern hemisphere. The begonia often produces colorful, beautiful flowers and so in this instance may symbolize the beauty of China from the narrator's perspective. However, in the next stanza, the narrator describes the begonia as "Pink, fragrant, bitten / By verdigris and insects." The implication is that the beauty the narrator associates with China is compromised, or to a degree spoiled, as the beauty of a flower might be spoiled by the bites of insects.
The narrator's new home, San Francisco, is described as "the tundra / Of the logical, a sea of cities, a wood of cars." A tundra is an area of land characterized by very low temperatures, in which only very hardy vegetation like shrubs, grasses and mosses will grow. Describing San Francisco as "a tundra / Of the logical," therefore, implies that it is an inhospitable place, and perhaps a place where the rational is not allowed to flourish. The subsequent two metaphors, "a sea of cities, a wood of cars," implies that the natural environment in San Francisco has been overtaken by the symbols of industrial and technological progress, namely "cities" and "cars."
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