I Ask My Mother to Sing

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1986

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Summary

Background

Poem Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Literary Devices

Themes

The Complexity of Memories

In Breaking the Alabaster Jar: Conversations with Li-Young Lee (2015), Lee says that writing poems assists him with his memories. As his memories often bewilder him, Lee turns to poetry to help him confront his recollections. In “I Ask My Mother to Sing,” Lee addresses his complex idea of memory. He acknowledges that he has no direct memory of Peking or the Summer Palace, yet he writes about the picnickers trying to avoid the rain, and the waterlilies, as if they were his memories. The specificity of the waterlilies in the rain makes it appear as if Lee had seen this with his own two eyes. They are not a memory proper but something that he imagines remembering due to the singing.

Aside from Lee’s memories, there are the memories of his mom and grandma. In Breaking the Alabaster Jar, Lee states that his mom came from a royal family. Her grandpa became the first president of the People’s Republic of China. While Lee doesn’t have personal memories of growing up in China, his mom and his grandma do. Although their memories of China aren’t clear, their tears suggest that their singing has produced emotional and fraught recollections of their homeland.

The image of the father depends on Lee’s memory of his dad. In a conversation, “Art Is Who We Are,” from Breaking the Alabaster Jar, Lee’s brother, Li-Lin, remembers their dad’s fondness for art and creative expression. He painted and played the accordion. This memory seems to be why Lee imagines his dad playing the accordion in Stanza 1 if he were still alive. The tension between the concrete memories of the dad playing the accordion and the speculative memories of China highlight the intricacy of memories.

(De)Constructing Gender Roles

In Rose, many of the poems revolve around Lee’s father. Lee says his father had a big influence on him and his siblings. Lee’s father served as the standard that Lee and his siblings were supposed to follow and emulate. However, in “I Ask My Mother to Sing,” the father is cast in a secondary role. The dad appears in two lines. If he were alive, he would support Lee’s mom and grandma as they sing. He wouldn’t sing with them; he would play the accordion by himself. The first stanza unfolds according to traditional gender roles. The women stick together, and the man is on his own. The women emote, and the male remains quiet.

At the same time, Lee subverts conventional gender roles. Since his dad has passed away, the women take the lead. Lee’s mom and grandma structure and propel the poem. The memories and images in the poem derive from their singing. Now, Lee depends on them. Through their singing, he can imagine Peking and the Summer Palace. In this poem, it’s as if the matriarchy has replaced the patriarchy.

In her essay “The Gender of Sound” (1992), the poet, translator, and critic Anne Carson discusses the supposed relationship between a person’s gender, their voice, and the general sounds that they emit. She shows how low-pitched voices are associated with masculinity and self-control. She documents how high-pitched voices were associated with femininity, being gay, a lack of restraint, and an absence of control.

Lee’s mom and grandma conform to the trope that ties women to emotion. The singing and the tears of the mom and the grandma signify a mixture of prolonged noises. In the third stanza, the women’s singing is paired with rain, which is “spilling” (Line 9). In the end, the women don’t stop singing, which indicates that their sounds are beyond their control and, like the rain, defy containment.

Then again, perhaps Lee’s mom and grandma are willing themselves to continue singing. The sounds don’t control them; rather, they’re in charge of the sounds. This reading deviates from the theories Carson records in “The Gender of Sound.” Here, the women can manage the sounds they make. They can sing when they want and they can choose to keep singing, regardless of what other emotions arrive. Their choices here underscore gender fluidity and performativity.

The sounds the males make in the poem conform to masculine tropes. Lee compares his father to a boat, which signals steadiness. The father himself doesn’t make sounds, as he’s dead. If he were alive, he’d be quiet, because he’d be playing the accordion. The speaker, Lee, keeps his emotions in check. Like his father, Lee doesn’t emit sounds. He neither sings nor cries. In the poem, Lee affects a stoic, traditionally masculine voice, yet he undermines traditional gender roles by highlighting his mother and grandmother’s agency.

Displacement and Endurance

Growing up, Lee moved around a lot. After fleeing Indonesia, Lee’s family spent time in Indochina, Southeast Asia, and Hong Kong. After arriving in the United States, Lee’s family settled in Pennsylvania. Lee’s itinerant youth informs the poem’s theme of moving and not having a permanent place to call home. Since his parents were exiled, Lee, as a byproduct, was exiled as well. He must rely on his mom and grandma’s singing to remind him of his roots and what life might have been like if his family hadn’t been displaced.

Even without knowing much about Lee’s life, the theme of displacement is apparent. A close reading of the poem—a reading that carefully focuses only on the single poem itself—generates feelings of loss and dislocation. The use of the word “love” (Line 9) indicates that the speaker is yearning for denied experiences. The speaker has a fractured, unfilled relationship with China and the Summer Palace. The speaker mollifies his displacement through the singing of his mom and grandma, who, at one time, were not displaced.

The speaker’s mother and grandma are displaced in other ways. Their roles and ages are reconfigured. In the title, and in Line 1, the women are referred to as a mother and a grandmother. In Line 2, they become mother and daughter. Lee’s grandma is now the mom and his mom turns into the daughter. They are both displaced from their actual ages since they’re labeled “young girls” (Line 2).

The father endures displacement as well. The speaker moves his father from death to the world of the living. He brings his dad back from the dead by imagining him playing the accordion and rocking “like a boat” (Line 4). The boat simile further displaces the father since the speaker’s simile takes the human father and merges it to the inhuman boat.