Looking Out -- Mitsuye Yamada

Apologies for the hiatus - this should mark a return to your regularly
scheduled Minstrels...

(Poem #1808) Looking Out It must be odd to be a minority he was saying. I looked around and didn't see any. So I said Yeah it must be. -- Mitsuye Yamada

How can you not love a poem like this? I had never heard of Yamada before I
read today's little gem, but the combination of pointed message and dry wit
she displays here have definitely marked her as someone I need to read more
of (recommendations welcomed!).

A quote I found in her Wikipedia entry is telling:

  "I have thought of myself as a feminist first, but my ethnicity cannot be
  separated from my feminism."

It is an uncomfortable truism, but a truism nonetheless, that "minority
artists" are almost forced into having their minority status inform their
work, if only by the legions of critics who insist on loudly analysing their
output through that lens, or by other members of the group who expect them
to be Making a Statement. Yamada's poem is richly ironic when viewed in that
light, simultaneously speaking for her status as an ethnically Japanese
American and shaking her head at people who can't see her as anything else.
To quote her again:

"White sisters should be able to see that political views held by women of
color are often misconstrued as being personal rather than ideological.
Views critical of the system held by a person in an out-group are often seen
as expressions of personal angers against the dominant society."

martin

[Links]

  Yamada's Wikipedia entry:
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitsuye_Yamada

  An essay on "Cultural Diversity and the Use of Literature":
    [broken link] http://www.mtsu.edu/~socwork/frost/crazy/culturaldiversitypaper.htm