lyric subjects 35Flower’. Song’s deliberate evocation of American art as a framing
device for the book serves to make a sustained link with the USA.
Importantly the volume interrogates the nation of the hyphen-
ated identity ‘Asian-American’. In this poem the identifi cation of
China as a cultural code which enables the female immigrant to
establish a sense of selfhood and community, is juxtaposed with a
legacy of Chinese history that rendered women without agency or
power. In ‘Lost Sister’ the problem of identifi cation becomes key:
how does one retain a sense of cultural cohesiveness and sustain
integration into a new country? Throughout the poem, cultural
routines grant the female immigrant the necessary tools to create
and affi rm her identifi cation. A litany of products and cultural
references – from Mah-Jong tiles and fi recrackers to jade and crick-
ets – litter the poem. ‘Lost Sister’ parallels the historical lives of
Chinese women who remain in China and those who migrate to the
USA.
As with ‘Youngest Daughter’, ‘Lost Sister’ invariably presents
the ideal of migration as a possibility of escape and rebellion.
Divided into two sections, it presents us with women who are both
subservient and resourceful. For them ‘to move was a luxury /
stolen from them at birth’ (p. 52 ). Space and time are restricted
into an image of painful and minute physical study as the women
learn ‘to walk in shoes / the size of teacups / without breaking /
the arc of their movements’ (p. 52 ). By contrast the lost sister rises
‘with a tide of locusts’ (p. 52 ) in the Chinese diaspora to the Pacifi c
shore. Song deftly utilises the association of the grasshopper in the
poem as a Chinese symbol of good luck and abundance, associated
only with forward movement. Yet the poem keenly draws attention
to the complexities and failures of cultural translation that are part
of the experience of migration. Echoing images of miscegenation,
the sister not only changes her name, but dilutes ‘jade green with
the blue of the Pacifi c’ (p. 52 ). A sense of extreme cultural disloca-
tion is emphasised in the second section which stresses the move-
ment to a cityscape of ‘dough-faced’ (p. 52 ) landlords, cramped
accommodation, laundry lines and restaurants. In this urban envi-
ronment the necessity of cultural identifi cation is represented also
as a restrictive chain, China becomes the symbolic ‘jade link hand-
cuffed to your wrist’ (p. 52 ). Like the other women of the opening