This poem speaks volumes on the incapability immigrants have on obtaining freedom and represents a disconnection to the society they live in. The narrator of the poem is an outsider looking into his suffocating life, where there is a clear sense of yearning for change, a different life style. Santiago Baca being the Chicano spokesperson that he is, speaks for the less fortunate Mexican community who dream of living the American lifestyle they are deprived of. Baca opens the poem up talking about deprivation of youth, “I play with a new generation of children, my hands in streambed silt of their lives a scuba diver's hands, dusting surface sand for buried treasure.” This newer generation will never get to experience life outside of their community and the narrator states that he can see the their future. The narrator also speaks about his son who dreams in the backseat about opportunity, a new community outside of the country. Realistically, each generation after his will too be deprived from the American lifestyle, in a vicious cycle.
A good amount of imagery of nature is displayed, as aunts and uncles are compared to trees and barbeques to mountains at the beginning of the poem. The narrator is tied to a family and community he feels no connection with, hence the name of the poem. He finds comfort in nature and uses his imagination to alter the discomfort that surrounds him. He truly longs for space, solitude, or as many of us would call it, the “American Dream.” However, he knows the only way he would be able to obtain this “buried treasure” is in his mind. The narrator daydreams of his family escaping his barrio to a new place, as they pass by rich land, streams and mountains. The dream gets interrupted with the honest reality of being deprived of such freedom, “We cannot afford a place like this.” Here the narrator uses the word “we” in reference to the Mexican community as a whole and he exposes to readers that poverty is what’s hindering them in moving forward. So they remain in their small town where they feel comfort, which they ironically don’t have ownership over. There are many obstacles one must pass in order to live American, which is why there are so many illegal immigrants. The American dream has a price and unfortunately not everyone shares the same opportunity to obtain that lifestyle.
Great take on this poem. When your group presented on this poem, I found myself asking why does the narrator have such disconnect with his family? I ended up connecting it to the life of the actual author itself. I remember your group discussing his biography and how Jimmy Santiago Baca grew up in isolation and displacement, and really din't grow up with strong "family ties" as the poem is entitled.
ReplyDeleteI think it is also definitely powerful, as you mentioned, how the narrator is driving towards this "American dream" that he cannot obtain as there is "no trespassing signs". And I think that this connects on a historical level in the sense that the southwest was a region that belonged to Mexico and was later taken by the United States. And so now Mexicans are closed out from a land that once belonged to them. The narrator yearns for this American dream but criticizes its validity as that dream of progress and opportunity came from American western expansion.