¶ … narrator of Cathy Song's poem "The White Porch" ponders her sexuality as well as social norms and traditions governing a woman's sexual behavior. Divided into three stanzas and written in free verse, the poem languishes with sensual lyricism. Short lines flow and propel the reader forward, in keeping with the general theme of sexual tension and excitement. However, the diction that Song employs in "The White Porch" is by far the most significant poetic device, the one that most evokes the central theme of budding female sexuality. The second stanza is filled with allusions and innuendo: "slow arousal," "swollen magnolias," and a cake that rises in the oven.
Juxtaposed on the narrator's acute sense of sexual awakening, a mother's voice intrudes in the final stanza. The narrator's damp, loose hair is now a "thick braided rope," a symbol for the girl's yoke to tradition. Her mother's "gold ring" also signals the imposition of social traditions like marriage on the spontaneity of unbridled passion. The last line of "The White Porch" indicates that the narrator deliberately and delightfully subverts tradition and norms by "smuggling" her lover into the bedroom under the cover of shadows.
Still, the narrator never notes discontent. She views her daily chores as "luxury," and "thoughtfully" shucks beans from their shells after her shower. Lingering on the white porch of the family home, the narrator is aware of being weighted down by family obligations but does not resent those traditions either. For example, she describes her hair as a "weight," but appreciates the hours of time she has before her lover steals in after dusk. The slow passage of time throughout the day parallels the pace of passionate sex and courtship too: in the second, most sensually-worded stanza the narrator describes "this slow arousal" with delightful imagery including an orange sponge cake rising in the oven, soon to be drenched in "canned peaches."
American Ethnic Literature There are so many different voices within the context of the United States. This country is one which is built on cultural differences. Yet, for generations the only voices expressed in literature or from the white majority. Contemporary American ethnic literature is important in that it reflects the multifaceted nature of life in the United States. It is not pressured by the white majority anymore, but is rather
/ 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
The choice cannot be repudiated or duplicated, but one makes the choice without foreknowledge, almost as if blindly. After making the selection, the traveler in Frost's poem says, "Yet knowing how way leads on to way/I doubted if I should ever come back" (14-15). And at the end, as one continues to encounter different forks along the way, the endless paths have slim chance of ever giving the traveler
judge books by covers. But it is something entirely different to job a story by its form, for the way in which an author chooses to frame a story is as important to our understanding of it as the content of the story itself - something that is becomes clear to us when we examine books that tell very different stories shaped by very different forms. Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights
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