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Article: Lee's Persimmons. (analysis of a Li-Young Lee poem)
- Article from:
- The Explicator
- Article date:
- March 22, 1996
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 1996 Heldref Publications. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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Li-Young Lee's "Persimmons" presents a second-generation Asian American's quiet analysis of his own experience between two cultures. The adult speaker returns, with gentle persistence throughout, to two words, "persimmon" and "precision," and by poem's end, these two words resonate with representative significance for a son who has managed to recover specific values from his fading heritage.
The speaker begins with the painful memory of being "slapped" by his sixth-grade teacher, Mrs. Walker, and told to stand in the corner "for not knowing the difference / between persimmon and precision." But the reader understands that the sixth grader's misperception has as much ...