"Turtle Soup" - Miralyn Chin

                                         FOR BEN HUANG

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?

Explorations of the Text

1.      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 author chose cauldron instead of pot might because she felt that her mother cooking the turtle was an action just like the witch. This can be explained as the cauldron was normally used by the witch to prepare the potions.

2.      Chin refers to “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?

She reference these rivers in China instead of the other rivers is because her mother was from China and she took examples that were familiar to her mother, and not something that strange or unfamiliar to her.

3.      What is the tone of this poem?

The tone of this poem is some kind of ridiculous. They both were debating on the turtle and some other tones might emerge in their debate. They both had their own view, and madness can be shown through their debate.

Ideas for Writing

1.      "Sometimes you're 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?

When you grew up in a place for a long period, you will have adapt or familiar with the culture itself. Regarding the quote above, it can be explain in the context of an immigrant family are everything including culture they had familiar or knew about the place that they had lived for long. But when they migrate to another country or place, they have to re-adapt the culture and everything that are strange or unfamiliar to them, and the most important is they have to abandon all the culture they knew. But is it easy for you to forget or abandon something that you had familiar with? For sure they can practice their culture in new land, but is it possible for others to accept it?

They will gain something better for sure, like the opportunity of getting better jobs, and the chances to live in better way when they moved to new land. But all of these must depend on the opportunity they got, if they fail to have opportunity, it must be a terrible situation. We always hear about the “American Dreams”, and it seems so beautiful and wonderful, and is something that became the target for everyone to achieve. But recently the fact told us that it was just a dream because there were too much of immigrant, and the percentage of unemployed is increasing. If so, what is the point to migrate to the place that only will make things worse? Is it worth to sacrifice something that is so precious just to get something that seems so uncertain?

The quote “Sometimes you’re the life, sometimes the sacrifice” that relate in the context of immigrant family can be explained as new hope and new life they gain when they moved to new land but the sacrifice will be the culture and everything regarding their motherland. They need and must sacrifice the culture about their motherland in order to survive or to be accepted by others in the new land. There will always be sacrificed something to get something in return. As in the poem “Turtle Soup”, the author’s mother was from China and migrated to The States, but it is hard for her mother to practice the new culture and forget the old culture simultaneously. It will have been a challenge for her mother to do so and that is why her mother was cooking the turtle soup even she had migrated to The States. 

Group Leader: Farid