Writing Family Life: A Feminist Inquiry into the Autobiographical Self in Cathy Song's Picture Bride (1983

Abstract

This paper contends that Picture Bride (1983)—by the contemporary American poet of Asian descent Cathy Song (b.1955) — contains distinctive autobiographical lyrics about her family. Reflecting a feminist consciousness, the "autobiographical paratext" of her poems reveals interesting pictures of her family members. She writes with sympathy about her grandparents' transpacific journey to the States and the hardships they suffered in the plantation in order to establish a family. And she records with understanding the process of transformation by which they became American citizens, thus allowing their children and grandchildren to live the American dream. And she uses two of the most important techniques of autobiographical art to access their past: looking at photographs of some of them and recalling her lived experiences with them. The final aim of her voyage to the past is both selfdiscovery and self-recognition. And her narratives about them are colored with emotions and meditations and blend with her distinctive vocabulary, images, and rhythms to create her special autobiographical lyric poems.