FREE ESSAY ON SONG'S LOST SISTER

SONG'S LOST SISTER

Cathy Songs poem Lost Sister explores the lives of two generations of Chinese women. One
generation chooses to leave China and begin a new life in America. the other chose to
remain in China and experience her culture the way it was meant to be. This is a
comparison of the two generations of women and how they are linked by culture and
seperated by lifestyle. 
In China, women were put in subservient positions to society. They were quiet, obedient
creatures who gathered patience. Song speaks of how women learned to provide for their
families, as they were learning to stretch the family rice. Women were expected to serve
a purpose and be seen and not heard. 
The following generation chose to go to America and lead a very different kind of life.
American culture is vastly different from that of China and women are given the
opportunity to experience freedom as a a first class citizen. This collective is
described as a sister across the ocean, who relinquished her name, giving the reader the
impression that this generation was rebelliously rejecting her culture, diluting jade
green with the blue of the Pacific.
However, these women were both losing and gaining by their choices. Chinese women who
chose to remain in China traded freedom for their culture. They were afraid to leave the
familiarity of their lives thee for an uncertain future in America Had they gone to
America, they would have lost the opportunity to experience Chinese culture firsthand.
They lose the freedom that the next generation would have and gained the experience of
living in their native culture ane accepting it as a way of life. These women were
admirable because of their strength to choose their culture and family over anything
else. Their dedication is at a level close to monks and saints. They were able to find
harmony in their lives because it was all they ever knew. 
The women who chose to go to America led a very different life. They were able to be free
of Chinese expectations of women. they did not have to learn to walk in shoes the size of
teacups, without breaking. Song indicates that In America, there are many roads and women
can stride along with men. These women were able to experience life as people who were
equal to men in society's eyes. If they had stayed in China they never would have had the
chance to experience something other then their native culture. Song emphasizes the life
of these women in America to point this out. She describes the sad loss of culture in
America, the meager provisions and sentiments of once belonging and the possibilites, the
loneliness, can strangulate like jungle vines. She refers to how these women speak
Chinese, when in America people are making claims you don't understand. She offers a
pale, stereotypical view on the extent of Chinese culture in America, where Americans are
tapping into your communication systems of laundry lines and restaurant chains. They lost
the cultural experience that the previous generation was able to have and gained freedom.
These women were admirable because of a different kind of strength. It takes a certain
combination of dertermination and stubbornness to choose to flee their homeland. These
women were, in fact, a very rebellious generation. 
Jade is referred to over and over in Song's poem. She states that even the peasants named
their first daughters Jade. She uses a jade link to symbolized women who were born into
Chinese culture, specifically handcuffed to the wrist of the generation of
Chinese-American women. Song almost berates this generation, claiming that they need
China and lost their culture in the unremitting space of your rebellion. She also states
how neither generation left any footprints, as one was footless and the other left an
ocean in between. 
These two generations of women were different and the same. They both had the strength to
choose a way of life that suited them. they were bound together by their culture but they
differed in lifestyle, and teir choices shaped their own lives and the lives of Chinese
women who came after them. 
Bibliography
Song, Cathy. Lost Sister.