Classic and Contemporary Poetry: Explained

 Marilyn Mei Ling Chin’s "We Are Americans Now, We Live in the Tundra" is a meditation on displacement, cultural transformation, and the contradictions of assimilation. The poem juxtaposes the speaker’s Chinese heritage with her present American existence, creating a landscape of longing, loss, and reluctant adaptation. Through a mixture of lyricism, irony, and cultural symbolism, Chin explores the fractured identity of the immigrant experience—one caught between nostalgia for the past and the stark realities of the present.

The poem opens in “hazy San Francisco,” positioning the speaker in a city long associated with Chinese immigration. Yet, rather than turning inward, she “face[s] seaward / Toward China”—suggesting both a physical and emotional orientation toward her ancestral homeland. The China she envisions is not a powerful nation or a place of triumphant heritage, but rather “a giant begonia— / Pink, fragrant, bitten / By verdigris and insects.” The metaphor of a begonia, a delicate flower often used for ornamental purposes, implies beauty but also fragility. The fact that it is “bitten” and suffering from “verdigris and insects” signals decay, perhaps alluding to a sense of erosion—both of China as a physical place and of the speaker’s personal connection to it.

She sings China “a blues song,” immediately linking her personal experience to the African American musical tradition of sorrow and survival. The line “even a Chinese girl gets the blues” asserts that the pain of displacement is universal. However, this emotional state is complicated by “Her reticence is black and blue.” Here, reticence may refer to both the speaker’s cultural restraint and the historical silencing of immigrant narratives. The phrase “black and blue” suggests bruising, a mark of both internalized pain and external oppression.

The poem shifts from personal lament to ecological metaphor: “Let’s sing about the extinct / Bengal tigers, about giant Pandas—” Both animals are symbols of China, but they are also endangered, representing the vulnerability of the natural world and, by extension, the erosion of cultural identity. The reference to pandas, famously difficult to breed in captivity, leads to an imagined conversation between Ling Ling and Xing Xing—real pandas gifted to the United States as a symbol of diplomatic relations. Their lament—“We are / Not impotent, we are important. / We blame the environment, we blame the zoo!”—is deeply ironic. The pandas, like immigrants, are displaced, their reproductive struggles mirroring the difficulty of cultural survival in an alien environment. Their assertion of importance rings hollow, as their fate remains out of their control.

A key question follows: “What shall we plant for the future?” This could be read as both a literal and metaphorical inquiry—what will immigrants cultivate in this new land? The speaker rejects “Bamboo, sassafras, coconut palms,” plants associated with Asian and tropical climates, signaling a refusal to replicate the past. Instead, she chooses “Legumes, wheat, maize, old swine / To milk the new.” These are the staple crops and livestock of North America, symbolizing full assimilation into an American agricultural and economic system. The decision to plant “old swine / To milk the new” suggests an uneasy inheritance—using the past to sustain the present, even if it is fundamentally different.

The pivotal declaration—“We are Americans now, we live in the tundra / Of the logical, a sea of cities, a wood of cars.”—distills the poem’s central theme. The metaphor of the “tundra” suggests barrenness, a landscape that is harsh and unwelcoming. This contrasts with the warm, fragrant image of China as a begonia, reinforcing the alienation of the immigrant experience. The “sea of cities” and “wood of cars” reduce modern America to a mechanized, impersonal sprawl—vast but lifeless, filled with movement but lacking rootedness.

The final section of the poem shifts to a direct farewell to the past: “Farewell my ancestors: / Hirsute Taoists, failed scholars.” The invocation of Taoists and failed scholars acknowledges the intellectual and spiritual traditions left behind. The hirsute (hairy) Taoists may symbolize mystics and sages, embodying a worldview deeply at odds with the tundra of the logical in which the speaker now resides. Failed scholars evoke the historical Chinese civil service exams, where failure meant social disgrace—a poignant reminder that not all who strive succeed, and that ambition often ends in disappointment.

The poem closes with a powerful memory of the speaker’s wetnurse, who embodies both superstition and political fear: “My wetnurse who feared and loathed the Catholics, / Who called out / Now that half-men have occupied Canton / Hide your daughters, lock your doors!” The half-men likely refer to Western colonizers, echoing historical anxieties about foreign intrusion and cultural erosion during the Opium Wars and beyond. The wetnurse’s warning—“Hide your daughters, lock your doors!”—underscores the perpetual fear of invasion and violation, whether by imperialists, modernity, or the forces of assimilation.

By ending with this cry of alarm, Chin leaves the reader with an unresolved tension: the past may be left behind, but its echoes persist. The warnings of ancestors continue to haunt the present, complicating the speaker’s assertion that “We are Americans now.” The title itself is a contradiction—the speaker claims American identity, but the phrase “we live in the tundra” suggests exile rather than belonging.

"We Are Americans Now, We Live in the Tundra" is a poem of paradoxes. It acknowledges the necessity of adaptation while mourning what is lost in the process. It critiques the sterility of modern American life yet accepts its inevitability. Chin masterfully weaves together ecological, political, and personal imagery to create a portrait of an immigrant experience that is both deeply felt and critically examined. The poem does not offer resolution—only the quiet knowledge that in becoming American, something essential has been left behind, and the ghosts of the past will never fully disappear.

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