Critical Thinking Piece

I chose this piece because of the way it directly relates with family ties and our family as our community. It ties together all three themes within our course. Our identity is formed through our family relationships, our family is our generational community, tying us all together through time, and it is within this family that we establish our traditions that keep us close, affecting our identity. This brings us to a circular journey that never ends within our family.

I believe this particular piece, "Ending Poem", shows my critical thinking skills well as it required looking at the way the writer's used metaphors to represent their thoughts to their audience. It required analyzing the text and looking critically at what and how the authors were communicating their concepts about identity, community and tradition through metaphors.

In “Ending Poem” by Rosario Morales and Aurora Levins Morales metaphors are used to present family as a very special kind of community. These metaphors covey to us how familial communities affect and shape our personal identity. It is written by a mother and daughter who “explore family ties as perhaps the most significant community affecting our lives (Latterell 95)”. The poem is written in such a way that every other line is written by daughter, then mother, daughter, then mother. The metaphors are primarily used by the mother in looking at her family heritage; however, they are found in both sections of the poem. Italicized lines represent the mother’s voice while the plain text represents the daughters voice.

The first true metaphor in the poem is found in line 6:
“I am New York Manhattan and the Bronx”
This metaphor gives us a picture of the large immigrant populations living in these areas. This poem was written in 1986; therefore, it did not bring to mind anything regarding the Twin Tower devastation that any mention of New York often brings to mind now. The intention and image presented by the metaphor is clear. ‘I am of the people that make up the backbone of this city: the immigrants.’ She tells us she is “up from the shtetl, a Californian Puerto Rican Jew”, this gives us a further picture of the Jewish neighborhoods, with the men out playing chess in the courtyards as the woman prepare for Shabbat.

“Spanish is my flesh, ripples from my tongue, lodges in my hips”
For those in our class who just watched “Spanglish”, this should be an especially meaningful metaphor, reminders of the rolling of tongue in Fleurrrrrrr and the beautiful curvaceous body of the Latino woman.

“Africa waters the roots of my tree”
This brings forth images of the beautiful giant acacias covering the plains in Africa that the giraffes graze on in the spring afternoons as the gentle rains flow around the roots of the magnificent trees.

“I am a late leaf of that ancient tree”
Here she paints a picture of the beautiful tree lined coasts of the Bahamas. The word Taino itself means good or noble and adds more character to the noble blood of so many cultures that run in her veins. By saying she is a late leaf, she is bringing into the limelight the fact that the culture was decimated by the 18th century, thus “Taino is in me, there is no way back”.

“Europe lives in me but I have no home there”
This goes back to the earlier line in the poem where the daughter says she is mestizo. Mestizo means ‘to mix’ and designates a person of mixed Spanish and European blood in most cases. This rich metaphor could bring forth a thousand different images to a thousand different readers as Europe means so many different things to so many different people. Primarily the reader is reminded again of the ancient cultures that have lived in Europe for millennia. Pictures of the beautiful architecture of Rome, Venice, Spain, etc. flood the mind.

“The table has a cloth woven by one, dyed by another, embroidered by another still”
Here we have a metaphor comparing the rich heritage of their ancestors to a table cloth pieced together by numerous family members over numerous generations, each adding their special touches of their cultural background to form the unity that is the community of their family.

They also tie the poem together with the early statement, “My people didn’t go to dinner parties. They weren’t invited.” And toward the end of the poem tell us, “I am a child of many mothers, They have kept it going, All the civilizations erected on their backs. All the dinner parties given with their labor.” Giving images of their mothers and mother’s mothers laboring for the communities in which they lived, yet finding their sense of community within themselves, there own family.


Subject: Family - Our most significant community