Turtle Soup by Marilyn Chin

You go home one evening tired from work, 
and your mother boils you turtle soup. 
Twelve hours hunched over the hearth
(who knows what else is in that cauldron).

You say, "Ma, you've poached the symbol of long life;
that turtle lived four thousand years, swam
the Wet, up the Yellow, over the Yangtze. 
Witnessed the Bronze Age, the High Tang,
grazed on splendid sericulture."
(So, she boils the life out of him.)

"All our ancestors have been fools.
Remember Uncle Wu who rode ten thousand miles
to kill a famous Manchu and ended up
with his head on a pole? Eat, child,
its liver will make you strong."
"Sometimes you're the life, sometimes the sacrifice." 
Her sobbing is inconsolable.
So, you spread that gentle napkin 
over your lap in decorous Pasadena.

Baby, some high priestess has got it wrong.
The golden decal on the green underbelly
says "Made in Hong Kong."
Is there nothing left but the shell
and humanity's strange inscriptions,

the songs, the rites, the oracles?


Exploration of the Text

1. Notice the author's choice of the word "cauldron" in line 4. What images or connections does this word evoke? Why might the author have chosen "cauldron" rather than "pot"?

The word "cauldron" brings to mind of witches stirring their potions in their cauldrons. In this case it would be horrible ingredients going into the cauldron to make their potions. The turtle soup being cooked by her mother suggests an action that is not acceptable by society and is not in the norm.

2. Chin refers to "the Wei," "the Yellow",  "the Yangtze." Why does she reference these rivers in China? Why not include the Nile, the Amazon,  or the Mississippi?

The poet refers to the rivers that can be found in China as a way to refer to her homeland. To her mother, the poet refers to things that are similiar and familiar to her mother instead of something different. 

3. What is the tone of the poem?

The tone of the poem suggests it to be argumentative. 


Ideas for Writing 


1. "Sometimes you're the life, sometimes the sacrifice." Write about this quote within the context of an immigrant family. What might a family gain or lose by moving to  a new land?

Positive

A family that migrates to a new land, for example, a family migrates from China to America is always for a better purpose. Usually the purpose is for a better life than the one they had been living in back in their homeland. Another country may have better opportunities for their family to grow and do well in the future. That specific country of choice, most commonly, like America would give a chance for the family to lead a better life. 

On the other hand, when a family migrates to another different country there are usually a lot of setbacks. One of it would be the cultural differences. China has a lot of culture that the people follow closely and still do even when in a different country. All of that culture will not be easy to follow as America is a relatively new country and does not hold much culture and tradition unlike other older cilvilizations like China, India and so on. When practicing one's culture in a different country, that certain practice may seem weird and will not be socially accepted. In this case would be an example from the poem "Turtle Soup" by Marilyn Chin where her mother cooks turtle soup and it is unheard of among the modern generation of that family and see it as barbaric and weird when to the mother who is cooking it, it may seem like a normal thing because it was normal to cook this kind of things back in China and it was not looked upon as horrible or weird by other people. 

Another reason there would be setbacks when a family migrates to America is the language difference. The younger generation would pick up quickly on the language used and spoken there frequently by the other people of that particular country. When that happens, they begin to forget their mother tongue and speak only in English, seeing it as modern and cool, instead of speaking their mother tongue which would have been among their parents or the older generation who can't speak English very well and hold on to their mother tongue.