Letter to Cathy Park Hong

-

    Dear Mrs. Hong!

    You most likely don't know who I am, but I am a huge fan of your writing!

    I am a senior in high school and I've encountered your pieces multiple different times, both as an assignment and through my free time.

    The first time I came across your writing was when we were assigned The Indebted from your book Minor Feelings, which has become a huge part of my philosophy as I become more involved in literature and the history of my ancestors.

    In AP Literature we were asked to choose a poem as our mentor poem to further develop our writers voice, and the first poem that came to mind was your poem "Zoo", which I was able to connect to as a South Asian in America with immigrant parents. The depth and somewhat obscurity at the beginning of the poem regarding the symbolism of the zoo interested me in finding a new way to deliver my ideas through symbolism.

    Through my own practice, I've attempted to write a couple of lines of poetry that showcased my feelings after reading The Indebted.

I saw the wanting spirit of my ancestors destroyed,
How they mourned gratification.
A gratification that is missing. A gratification only given by their own,
but not found in gratification.

    This was my first time writing poetry, so I hope it wasn't too basic and carried some depth to it like your writing.

    From what I found in Zoo, I was drawn to the structure of the poem, and how even the structure of the piece provides importance to your message. If I were to start writing more poetry, I would try to engage in providing a structure for my poem that strengthens its meaning.

    As someone who was initially drawn in by your book Minor feelings, my interest in your verses opened me up to the world of poetry, something I overlooked before.

Thank you for inspiring a new type of creativity and emotion in me,

Shambhavi

 

   

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

What's in a Name?

-
Image
     With this being the first 12 AP blog, I think introducing myself and talking about the origins of my name would be a better way to start the school year.      So the name Shambhavi (Shum-ba-vee). Having a unique name already distinguishes me from others. My name usually isn't something that people are able to pronounce correctly the first time. Instead, I'll get a few mispronounced versions of my name before the right pronunciation.      As a child, my appreciation for my name was much lower than it is now. I wasn't used to being the only unique name in between other Toms, Sallys, and Jims. In third grade, I chose to go by SGS which is my initials rather than my full name, which I wasn't able to continue for more than a week because of my teacher. Growing up my parents told me how my name was chosen, but the weight and significance of the name took longer for me to understand.      Shambhavi: the name of a...
Read more

Is our Empathy just? (The Leavers)

-
        A mother left her child all by himself in a world that seems to not be meant for him. He is seen as an alien by not only his peers, but even his own adoptive parents. “I can’t figure out how to act around him sometimes,” something no child would want to hear from their adoptive mother. We see the son grow up into becoming an alcoholic and gambling addict, but still trying to save his face, he seems to get better. While reading through the novel, I found myself constantly wondering what I would do if I was stuck in situations similar to Deming(the son) or Polly(the mother). Would I remain sane if my mother disappeared and never came back? Would I be able to save myself from a gambling addiction or alcoholism?      As humans we tend to believe that we would never end up in circumstances that Deming or Polly ended up in, "I'm smart enough, if my grade falls then I would work harder for it" or "If I became addicted to gambling I could pu...
Read more

Cathy Park Hong's Minor Feelings

-
     Last year in AP Lang we read a part of Cathy Park Hong's book Minor Feelings, specifically, The Indebted, and Hong's writing style and word choice stuck with me as impactful and gave me a new perspective on different ideas.      When thinking of beautiful words and poetry, the first thing that came to my mind was Minor Feelings and The Indebted. Although I haven't read all of Minor Feelings, there were two lines from the book that stuck out to me as beautiful.      “Innocence is both a privilege and a cognitive handicap, a sheltered unknowingness that, once protracted into adulthood, hardens into entitlement.” Hong's choice of words such as "unknowingness" and "hardens" brings a sense of (interestingly enough) innocence turning into the knowledge of self, which is exactly what Hong is trying to convey. Another notable word to point out is Hong referring to innocence as a "cognitive handicap", unlike others who would refer...
Read more