In her essay “Reconstructing Asian-American Poetry: A Case for Ethnopoetics,” Lim argues for an increased inclusion of ethnocentric writings in literary education, in order to offset and correct the “inherent bias of the Anglo-American mainstream” (51). As an Asian-American writer herself, Lim applies this notion to the specific context of Asian-American literature. However, she admits the paradoxical nature of exposing Asian-American writing to society: it is difficult to increase the identification of Asian-American literature and its sources, without patronizing, unintentionally or otherwise, Asian-Americans as “special;” doing so would only reaffirm existing stigmatic stereotypes (51).

What is particularly notable about Asian-American poetry, according to Lim, is its steadfast identity (52). That is, in contrast to white immigrants, Asians have not as readily assimilated into American culture (see this post, which discusses Nellie Wong’s “When I Was Growing Up,” a poem about the pressures of assimilating into white girlhood). Such cultural stubbornness is a central characteristic of Asian-American writing. But the need for incorporating Asian-American writing into the mainstream extends beyond the desire for attention to the culture’s exoticism. In fact, it is the overbearing reliance of Asian exoticism that leads to society’s patronizing views of Asian-American writing. Lim writes that the primary issue is “not whether the diction reflects an Asian-American experience but whether the sum of the poem is greater than its parts — its diction, subject, rhythms, and devices” (53). Stereotypical imagery — e.g. jade, buddha figures, bound feet —  when done in excess, misshapes the “local color” of Asian objects, trivializing them as just another cheap call for attention (53).

To avoid this travesty of Asian culture, then, these “ethnic references” must become “extra-local,” i.e. through the creative use of local imagery, a writer individually rediscovers and tells a historical perspective belonging uniquely to them (53). This extra locality is achieved only through the proper execution of the three levels of ethnopoetics. The first level regards a poem’s stylistic devices — diction, figures of speech, imagery — i.e. the elements of a poem that are easily recognizable as Asian-American (53). However, as mentioned previously, while this level is an essential component of Asian-American poetry, one must be careful not to overuse such devices, as doing so can distract from and cheapen a poem’s thematic impact.

The second level of ethnopoetics is the incorporation of diction from a non-English language, as ethnic linguistics bring the reader closer to the original source of culture. The importance of the second level, Lim explains, stems from the “linguistic survival of first language expressions, whether actual or translated into English, point[ing] to the poets’ awareness that there exists in the original language itself certain values, concepts, and cultural traits which are not discoverable in English” (54). Yamada, in her poems “Homecoming” and “I Learned to Sew,” demonstrates masterful incorporation of these first two levels, unabashedly retaining the Japanese-accented English of both her mother and grandmother, framing for these women their stories of immigrant adversity, at once relatable yet uniquely theirs.

The third and final level of effective ethnopoetics “lies in the contextual realm . . . in the area of intertextuality” (54). Lim notes that this level is of particular importance because careless execution of it is a primary cause of readers’ inability to connect with the text. Asian-American poetry is not inherently better than that of Native Americans or Black-Americans, for example, just because it is Asian-American; but it is inherently different. While that may be obvious, these differences between cultural heritage necessarily affect readers’ experiences with and their reactions to ethnopoetics. In particular, Lim clarifies, variation in cultural context creates “significant differences between readers’ expectations and authors’ intentions, between the untrained readers’ conventional, culture-bound responses and the trained readers’ ethno-sensitive interpretations” (56). That is, the reader’s own experiences meet the poem’s cultural themes and backgrounds in an act of compromise. Lim eloquently accentuates that it is exactly this intertextuality between reader and writer, through the juxtaposition of the other’s “referential field,” that gives life to the text in the reader’s imagination (56). When this intertextual bridge is broken, the referential fields lose meaning, and therefore so does the poetry.

In conjunction with one another, the three levels of ethnopoetics demonstrate that the medium is at its most effective when it includes (i) poetic devices representative of and local to the poet’s cultural background, (ii) linguistic phrases stemming from the cultural source (either in the original language, or a translation of it), demonstrating its marked distinctness from the Anglo-American mainstream, and, most importantly, (iii) an “informed socio-cultural approach which counteracts the privileging of the dominant culture” (59). Cautiously, Lim disclaims that she is not arguing that ethnic poetry possesses inherent literary value simply on the basis that it is separate from the majority culture. Rather, ethnic poetry cannot fairly be assigned meaning until the “unequal relationship between uninformed reader and informed text” is corrected (59). Thus, only through the proper execution of the three levels of ethnopoetics can the medium depart from its esoteric status and towards the unpatronizing mainstream, and thereby create an ethno-sensitive society both able and willing to engage with such literature.

Works Cited

Lim, Shirley. “Reconstructing Asian-American Poetry: A Case for Ethnopoetics.” MELUS, vol. 14, no. 2, 1987, pp. 51–63. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/467352.