Monday, February 7, 2011
Discussing the poem "I Am Not Your Princess"
I feel the pain the American Indian Chrystos is expressing. She just feels depressed and hurt for all she has encountered for being an American Indian. She is tired of people's pity and tired of people trying to comfort her. She just wants to be alone and gain back what little she has remaining of her heritage.She does not want to be bothered, she just wants to live her life. I also felt her anguish, she is sick and tired of being treated as the inferior. I think the fry bread is something meaningful to her which is one of the last things that no one can take away from her. As a result, the repeats the recipe of the fry bread to emphasize her culture. It is disgusting to see how people jugde other races because of what they have seen in the cinema. They are sometimes so ignorant. However, it is not their fault it's the media's fault since that is what most people grow up watching. I am proud of writers such as Chrystos who put these types of poems out there for people to get educated.
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I completely agree; I also thought that the fry bread recipe could relate to her feelings about her culture, her situation, and her identity. To me, her talking about the ingredients in the recipe are saying that she is made up more than what others think she is and that she is multifaceted like everyone else. Also, her mention of how there are a variety of different recipes for fry bread can be a comment on how there isn't just one stereotypical prototype of Native Americans. Another thing that supports the idea of a parallel between the recipe and the author is that at the end of the recipe she says to let the bread rest and at the end of the poem when she mentions the recipe again, she asks to be allowed to rest as well.
ReplyDeleteI agree, even the form of the poem with no puncuation endicates the urgency of the message that Chrystos is saying in the poem. I like also how at the end of the poem she says " remember this is only my recipe There are many others let me rest here." In this quote she is implying that her only place of rest is with in this poem. Her she has the freedom to write about her life regarding the stertypes she faces.
ReplyDeleteI also thought that the recipe represented that not all Native Americans are the same, because Chrystos goes on to say something about: this is just my recipe, there are many others out there.
ReplyDeleteWhen I read the poem myself i did not get as much of the urgency that I got after I heard the reading out loud with our professor.
i definitely hear the frustration when i take into account that there was no punctuation for pauses and how the sentences did not end conventionally and how some of them ran together to portray urgency and frustration.
I agree that people are ignorant and believe whatever they see on the screen. Also, I think that people need to be educated about the truth and this is one way to do it. This poem really brings attention all the injustices and the fact that many people think of Native Americans inferior to other races. The fact that Chrystos is writing out against this is a really important step in the decolonization process that is going on.
ReplyDeleteI think that it is true some people might be ignorant, but other people might just simply be naive or uneducated. It's only natural to be curious about cultures and customs that someone is unfamiliar with. I also thought of the fry bread as something that no one can really take away from her, but as something that she can share with others. It shows that she is willing to be friendly and exchange recipes with other people but that she is still just a simple woman who cooks fry bread the same as anyone else would. The poem really reminds me of our discussions of having everyone on the "equal playing field" because I feel that she is just trying to keep everyone equal.
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