Essay Questions

To what historical event do the poem’s final stanzas allude?

Following the collapse of the South Vietnamese government in the wake of the withdrawal of American troops and the ending of the war, thousands of refugees attempted to escape the potential consequences of full integration of the country under an especially oppressive communist rule. Although generally perceived as a late 1970’s phenomenon, what came to be known as the Vietnamese boat people desperately seeking political sanctuary in small, overcrowded boats actually wound up totaling nearly a million people between 1975 and 1995. The language of the final stanzas makes it quite clear that the mother was one of these boat people who successfully made the voyage. Estimates of those who died in the attempt lie somewhere between 200,000 and 400,00.

What doe the narrator’s recollection of his youth suggest about why his mother never pursued her passion after leaving Vietnam?

The tragic implication of the poem is that the mother is a very bright, educated lover of literature who potentially might well have become the high school teacher of her youthful dreams had the war turned out differently. Instead, she winds up a laborer struggling to make extra money to afford tuition for the speaker and obsessing over correct spelling in order to ensure it is spoken like a native. The reference to speaking broken English is obviously directed toward the mother with the implication being inevitable: even if one speaks with the authority of a genius in their own language, they are bound to sound like a low-wage worker when trying to speak a language they are just starting to learn. The mother’s future was sealed as a factory worker the moment she opened her mouth even if she knew more about literature than any teacher her child ever had in all his years of schooling.

How is the allusion to poet William Wordsworth a pun?

The narrative is all about a child’s discovery of a mother’s childhood dreams. In this case, the suspected answer—gardening—is not just ill-conceived, but the actual answer—teaching literature—is exactly the career path taken by the child. The child is startled to learn that the dream of the mother is the reality they have been living all along. Not only that, but the very reason they are able to enjoy the fulfillment of that shared dream is the sacrificing of it by the mother. When the child tells the mother “this week I taught my students Wordsworth / saw thousands of daffodils and thought of you” it is in reality a way conveying the recognition of just how much words worth learning meant to her as she turned her back on not just her homeland, but her language. With that disappeared the dream of teaching the words of poets.