/ I stroke through air, / I fly through water, / I send my mother home."(Song, 54) Thus, it can be said that the author dismisses the figure of her mother only after it had served its purpose, namely to create the connection with the past. The conclusion that everything is "as it should be" ironically points to the reversal of notions and roles in the text. The narrator's desire to be one and the same with her mother springs obviously from her need to define herself in a meaningful way. Her mother represents not only her genetic code but also her cultural one. The representations of the mother and the daughter thus begin to coincide, as in Song's poem the Youngest Daughter: "My skin has become as damp / and pale as rice paper / and feels the way / mother's used to before the drying sun / parched it out there in the fields."(Song, 112) the poem describes briefly the ritual of a bath that...
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