a lit bulb — the rest of his face in shadow,
darkened as if the artist meant to contrast
his bright knowledge, its dark subtext.
This stanza from early in the poem suggests that within Thomas Jefferson's stately historical portrait there is a suggestion of his complexities and failures. The speaker describes the way in which the light falls on his face, implying both the "bright" quality of his writing and thinking, as well as the "dark subtext" that undermines it. This phrase refers to the fact that Jefferson owned slaves and had an affair and children with one of them. The image of the shadow in the painting effectively sets up the divide between his ideas and his actions.
I did not know then the subtext
of our story, that my father could imagine
Jefferson's words made flesh in my flesh —
This is the turning point of the poem. For years, the speaker argues with her father about Jefferson. She feels that the hypocrisy of his personal life is not excusable, while her father feels that they should focus on his intellectual accomplishments. In this moment, she shows that eventually she realized some part of his defense of Jefferson was personal. She believes that, however indirectly, he envisioned his whiteness making her better in some way. This is important, as later in the poem she says that while her father did not share Jefferson's views, some part of him was drawn into his troubling line of thought.
I've made a joke of it, this history
that links us — white father, black daughter —
even as it renders us other to each other.
In the final stanza of the poem, the speaker seems to resolve some of the tension between herself and her father, saying that she is now able to joke about it. This follows a scene in which she makes fun of a remark made by a tour guide at Monticello about imagining the past, noting that she and her father would have to split up. At the same time, she notes that this complex link between them, her father being a white parent to a Black child, still creates distance. She is able to make light of the situation but still shows an awareness that he cannot fully understand her point of view as a Black woman.
