“Names” and “En Route to Bangladesh, Another Crisis of Faith” Essay

Please use the comment feature here in Google docs to annotate “Names” and “En Route to Bangladesh, Another Crisis of Faith” (it’s the button above that looks like a speech box with a plus sign in it, to the right of the link button).

For each poem, please make two annotations.

One should be a question and the other a comment.

Your annotations can address the form, shape, or structure of the poem, can ask questions or make comments about historical or cultural perspectives, and/or can record your affective (emotional/physical) or associative responses (i.e. “this line or word makes me think of….” Or “this word made me feel like….”)

Please post your annotations by 11:59pm on Wednesday, Oct. 7. In class on Thursday we will look at all of our annotations together and use them to guide our analysis and discussion.



Names

By Teresa Mei Chuc

I am tired of having five different names; -

Having to change them when I enter



A new country or take on a new life. My

First name is my truest, I suppose, but I



Never use it and nobody calls me by this Vietnamese

Name though it is on my birth certificate—



Tue My Chuc. It makes the sound of a twang of a

String pulled. My parents tell me my name in Cantonese



is Chuc Mei Wai. Three soft bird chirps and they call

me Ah Wai. Shortly after I moved to the U.S., I became



Teresa My Chuc, then Teresa Mei Chuc. “Teresa” is the sound

Water makes when one is washing one’s hands. After my first



Marriage, my name was Teresa Chuc Prokopiev.

After my second marriage, my name was Teresa Chuc Dowell.



Now I am back to Teresa Mei Chuc, but I want to go way back.

Reclaim that name once given and lost so quickly in its attempt



to become someone that would fit in. Who is Tue My Chuc?

I don’t really know. I was never really her and her birthday



on March 16, I never celebrate because it’s not my real birthday

though it is on my birth certificate. My birthday is on January 26,



really, but I have to pretend that it’s on March 16

because my mother was late registering me after the war.



Or it’s in December, the date changing every year according to

the lunar calendar—this is the one my parents celebrate



because it’s my Chinese birthday. All these names

and birthdays make me dizzy. Sometimes I just don’t feel like a



Teresa anymore; Tue (pronounced Twe) isn’t so embarrassing.

A fruit learns to love its juice. Anyways, I’d like to be string...



resonating. Pulled back tensely like a bow



Then reverberate in the arrow’s release straight for the heart.



En Route to Bangladesh, Another Crisis of Faith

By Tarfia Faizullah

—at Dubai International Airport and ending with a line by César Vallejo

Because I must walk

through the eye-shaped

shadows cast by these

curved gold leaves thick

atop each constructed

palm tree, past displays

of silk scarves, lit

silhouettes of blue-bottled

perfume—because

I grip, as though for the first

time, a paper bag

of french fries from McDonald's,

and lick, from each fingertip,

the fat and salt as I stand alone

to the side of this moving

walkway gliding me past dark-

eyed men who do not look

away when I stare squarely

back—because standing

in line to the restroom I want

only to pluck from her

black sweater this one shimmering

blond hair clinging fast—

because I must rest the Coke, cold

in my hand, beside this

toilet seat warmed by her thighs,

her thighs, and hers.

Here, at the narrow mouth

of this long, humid

corridor leading to the plane,

I take my place among

this damp, dark horde of men

and women who look like me—

because I look like them—

because I am ashamed

of their bodies that reek so

unabashedly of body—

because I can—because I am

an American, a star

of blood on the surface of muscle.