Author: CD5180

I wear a necklace every day that holds some of my grandmother’s ashes. It is small and simple, but it means more to me than anything else I own. Whenever I touch it, I feel closer to her, like she is always watching over me. The only time I can’t wear the necklace is when I’m playing sports, so I wrap it around my water bottle and face it toward the court, like she’s still there watching me. When I was freewriting about this necklace, I realized it’s not just jewelry. It’s a reminder of where I come from and the people who helped shape who I am. 

Thinking about that made me connect it to The Legend of Auntie Po, which is also about how people hold onto memory and heritage. In the story, Mei uses stories to stay connected to her culture. Even though she lives in a place where she’s treated differently for being Chinese, those stories give her comfort, confidence, and a link to her family’s past. I think that’s important; everyone needs something to help them hold onto their identity. For me, it’s my necklace. For Mei, it’s her stories. 

LGBTQ+ communities, stories, and symbols are a way to stay visible and remembered in a world that sometimes tries to ignore them. These texts matter because they highlight the ways people stay connected and strong by holding onto the memories that shape them.  

Making this connection between my necklace and Auntie Po made me realize that remembering someone takes effort. Mei keeps her culture alive by sharing her stories, and I keep my grandmother close by wearing her ashes. And by reading books like The Legend of Auntie Po, we help make sure important stories and histories don’t disappear. 

In Angels in America, Tony Kushner shows us something uncomfortable through Louis: how fear can poison love and make us abandon our responsibilities to the people we care about. When Louis tells Prior, “I’m afraid of the disease. I’m afraid that you’ll die. And I’m afraid that I’ll die,” the way he keeps saying “I’m afraid” says everything. He’s not just scared of AIDS; he’s so consumed by his own terror that he can’t be there for Prior in any real way.  What’s striking is that Louis keeps circling back to his own fear instead of thinking about what Prior is going through. Kushner seems to be pointing to something bigger here. During the AIDS crisis in the 1980s, a lot of people protected themselves instead of showing up with compassion.  Similar to examples we talked about in class such as hairdressers refusing to cut hair and how the lesbian community stepped up. The scene makes us ask, what does courage really look like when everything’s falling apart? What does love actually demand from us? Louis’s answer is heartbreaking; he fails at both. His fear isn’t just about death. It’s about facing what it means to abandon someone who needs you. Through Louis, Kushner shows us that we can’t grow or do better by running from what scares us. Real love means showing up for people even when it’s hard.

In a passage from Loving in the War Years page 24 by Moraga it reveals how love and intimacy are shaped by violence, displacement, and uncertainty. ” Loving in the war years calls for this kind of risking without a home to call our own” (p.24) These frames love as a dangerous act that is unstable and unprotected. The lack of home suggests literal displacement that could happen during a war and the absence of culture or social belonging especially for queer women of color.

The repetition of “I’ve got to take you as you come” highlights Moraga consistently adapting to the partners state of being. The relationship is not fully secure. This can tie back into how in war and oppression constantly alters relationships.  The reference to “what deaths you saw today” brings the violence closer, implying that each day carries loss or confrontation with mortality. Which can also take a toll on the relationship.

I also notice the phrase “battle bruised.” It makes the partner’s pain feel physical, as if the war outside has left marks on their body and spirit. But even with all that, the Moraga ends with “refusing our enemy, fear.” To me, that’s the most important part. It means that loving each other, even when it’s risky and uncertain, is an act of resistance. Fear is the real enemy, and choosing love is how they fight back.

 

Boy at edge of the woods is a shorter poem out of the bunch, so I have chosen to focus on the poem as a whole. The poem has more sexual undertones in comparison to the others. It seems to be more of a meaningless hookup for the other party. Saeed Jones or whomever he is writing from the perception of seems to feel defeated and dirty (literally and metaphorically) in a sense after the interaction. Jones or the persona he writes about has a feeling of not satisfaction, but emptiness.  The other man leaves the writer alone for the aftermath of it all, which I’d assume to be upsetting.  The abandonment is just as significant as the encounter itself. Possibly this was done for an escape initially but leads to the feeling of being underwhelmed. The sense of searching for relief or distraction is there, but the poem closes with the return to the “burning house”. This “burning house” seems to me an unhappiness with his home and possibly even with his parents since many other poems in this series alluded to parental issues.  Ultimately, I think this poem is really about the emptiness that follows when physical desire is used as an escape from deeper pain. The language makes this clear when the speaker returns to the “burning house,” an image that suggests unresolved turmoil at home and perhaps even family conflict, as hinted at in other poems where Jones alludes to parental issues. The encounter itself may seem like relief in the moment, but the aftermath shows how fleeting and hollow that comfort is. This connects to the poem as a whole because the short length (only one stanza) mirrors the brevity of the experience, quick and intense, but leaving behind only silence and loneliness.