How to Do Something in One Way

 Last year I visited Rachel Hadas's lit class at Rutgers and read them some of my poems. At the end of their semester the students wrote about a poem that made an impression on them. I'm so pleased that two people wrote about "A Whole History," a gay breakup poem, and one wrote about "Attribution," about the time at Oxford when I was caught for plagiarism.

The piece on "Attribution" was particularly perceptive, eloquent, and moving about the aftermath of colonialism. The student wrote, "The concept of this poem was one which I personally could relate to, having lived in South Africa for 4 years and also being from Zimbabwe which was a country that was colonized by the British between 1888 through 1980, I found out Jee and I have similar backgrounds in that aspect. I think when you've experienced living in the aftermath of colonialism even when in modern times you cannot forget about its existence because the residue still lingers to this day. The poem made us explore and ask ourselves, who are we really? Who would we be if we had not been told how to be or how to speak. Everything we do is an attribution to the people who were here before us and language has been passed down to us but it is never thought of that way and Jee sparks that conversation in his poem. Interestingly enough, we never think to question what has been taught from generation to generation. We just assume it's the right way. We are binded (blinded) by the imprint of colonialism no matter if we were born today or born a hundred years ago.... As I read the poem, I was intrigued by how the same thing 'being good in English' which positively affected his life in his home country and catapulted him to England, became the same thing 'being good in English' which negatively affected him when he relocated to England. Transitions such as this I have found can put a person's identity into question. A sense of identity can be stripped away, having known how to do something in one way your entire life only to be told it's the wrong way."

I love how the writer defines identity, not as a kind of essence, but as the knowledge of how to do something in one way.

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