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Kinship

The poem contrasts the speaker's mother's long stories about their Cuban ancestors and life on a tropical farm with their father's side of the family's brief and vague stories about fleeing violence in Ukraine, leaving loved ones behind, with little knowledge of what became of those left behind. The length of one's stories about their childhood seems to be determined by whether their family immigrated or escaped from danger, with escape resulting in shorter, more sparse stories.

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64 views2 pages

Kinship

The poem contrasts the speaker's mother's long stories about their Cuban ancestors and life on a tropical farm with their father's side of the family's brief and vague stories about fleeing violence in Ukraine, leaving loved ones behind, with little knowledge of what became of those left behind. The length of one's stories about their childhood seems to be determined by whether their family immigrated or escaped from danger, with escape resulting in shorter, more sparse stories.

Uploaded by

carie
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Kinship

BY  MARGARITA ENGLE


Two sets
of family stories,
one long and detailed,
about many centuries
of island ancestors, all living
on the same tropical farm...

The other side of the family tells stories


that are brief and vague, about violence
in the Ukraine, which Dad's parents
had to flee forever, leaving all their
loved ones
behind.

They don't even know if anyone


survived.

When Mami tells her flowery tales of Cuba,


she fills the twining words with relatives.
But when I ask my
Ukrainian-Jewish-American grandma
about her childhood in a village
near snowy Kiev,
all she reveals is a single
memory
of ice-skating
on a frozen pond.

Apparently, the length


of a grown-up's
growing-up story
is determined
by the difference
between immigration
and escape.
 

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