The problems single mothers have to face
One of the longest poems is entitled Motherhood and the poem explores the life of a young girl named Peggy who finds herself pregnant once more. Peggy already has a daughter of three years old and now she is expecting another one, fathered by the same man. The author explores the problems Peggy has as a result of her transgressing and also present the social stigma she has to face. Peggy is reminded everyday by her mother that she is a whore and thus Peggy can’t find the support she needs from her family. While Peggy’s mother goes as far as to suggest that she should regrets not killing her children, Peggy loves her two girls and would anything for them. Trough Peggy, the narrator explores just how far a mother’s love can go and how a mother’s love is limitless.
Abuse and its consequences
In one of her darker poems, Ai Ogawa talks about a young girl who was abused by her grandfather when she was just ten years old. The young girl grew up to become a woman who forgot about what happened to her. Little by little, her experiences came back to her and she suddenly realized why in certain circumstances she was behaving in a rather peculiar way. Through this, the author shows that even if a person may forget about something that happened to them in the past, those experiences may still influence us in the present and make us behave in a way we do not understand completely.
Social problems
The author of the poems was deeply interested in the social hardships many people had to deal with and thus she analyzed in her poems some of the problems they had to face. Ai Ogawa focuses on the middle and low-class and how their struggles were affecting their everyday life and also their family relationships. Ai Ogawa also analyzed the life of a normal black person and how it was constantly under threat due to the discrimination black people suffered in society