Marilyn Chin (1957-  ) Turtle Soup

You go home one evening tired from work,

and your mother boils you turtle soup.

Twelve hours hunched over the hearth

(who knows what else is in that cauldron).

You say, "Ma, you've poached the symbol of long life;

that turtle lived four thousand years, swam

the Wet, up the Yellow, over the Yangtze.

Witnessed the Bronze Age, the High Tang,

grazed on splendid sericulture."

(So, she boils the life out of him.)

"All our ancestors have been fools.

Remember Uncle Wu who rode ten thousand miles

to kill a famous Manchu and ended up

with his head on a pole? Eat, child,

its liver will make you strong."

"Sometimes you're the life, sometimes the sacrifice."

Her sobbing is inconsolable.

So, you spread that gentle napkin

over your lap in decorous Pasadena.

Baby, some high priestess has got it wrong.

The golden decal on the green underbelly

says "Made in Hong Kong."

Is there nothing left but the shell

and humanity's strange inscriptions,

the songs, the rites, the oracles?

Group’s leader: Annur Ezzati

Explorations of the Text

Notice the author’s choice of the word “cauldron” in line 4. What images or connections does this word evoke? Why might the author have chosen “cauldron” rather than “pot”

The using of cauldron is to show something bad. Cauldron in the first stanza means that the inhumanity aspect in the persona’s mother because she was selfish to boil the turtle. The son felt that his mother torture the turtle just to maintain the cultures. If we compared to pot, pot is nothing. It is just a common thing. So, the author use  the word of “cauldron” to show the bad side of the mother.

Chin refers to the “the Wei”, “the yellow” and “the Yangtze”. Why does she reference these rivers in China?  Why not include the Nile, the Amazon, or the Mississippi?

Because this poem is about the cultures in China. All those rivers was related to China. Nile, the Amazon, or the Mississippi does not related to the cultures of China.

What is the tone of this poem?

The tone of this poem are mocking and sarcastic. We can see that even though the persona tried to not hurt her mother’s feeling, but he was not satisfied with what her mother wanted him to be. The conflict here is when the persona either her mother cannot being tolerate with each other. The persona wanted her mother to adapt with modern cultures but the mother wanted the persona to stay with Chinese’s cultures.

Ideas for Writing ( not less than 400 words)

“Sometimes you are the life, sometimes the sacrifice”. Write about this quote within the context of an immigrant family. What might a family gain or lose by moving to a new land?

There are advantages and disadvantages when a family moving to a new land. Perhaps, in this poem the mother has moved away from her home country to a foreign one back then, she has lost some of her cultures, her China’s history, her relatives and even her son makes her feel like an outsider. She wanted to bring it back and make her child adapted with China’s cultures. But, the speaker was adapted with American cultures based on line “over your lap in decorous Pasadena”. Pasadena is something that originally came from California. If we look at the positive side, an immigrant family can gain the chances of better life if they move to develop country like American. They can get better education and enhance their knowledge. They will learn how to survive in develop country and compete with others. So, they can improve themselves. However, you have to sacrifice something if you want to move to a new land. For example, you might lose your identity. You will forget about your roots and where you came from. For instance, in this poem, we can see how the speaker forgot about his roots when he tried to be an American. He tried to hide the identity of Chinese by using a napkin of Pasadena. Like most Americans, he doesn't really have an identity. He just likes to pretend. So, he will forget about the Chinese’s culture. He was complaining about the mother killing the four thousand year old turtle for a turtle soup, but the mother just tells him to eat it. He did not want to adapt with that culture because he was adapted with American’s cultures. The most important part is, an immigrant family can make them isolated from each other. Because of misunderstanding and different point of view about new cultures, they might argue with each other which culture is the best. For example, we can see how the son tried to show the American cultures to his mother and how the mother wanted her son to adapt with their ancestors cultures. Both of them are trying to defend their stand.  We can see in this poem that the mother did not want to adapt with modern cultures while her son did not want to accept the old cultures. So, when this happened, it might give negative effects towards the bonding of the family. It would be difficult for them a good relationship.