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    A Letter To A Mother Sent Abroad

    Uploaded by

    Lee Suarez
    The speaker, writing to their mother, explains that they will not be coming home for the summer as their mother had requested. The speaker had promised friends that they would spend time at tourist beaches and sites. The speaker reflects on their mother sending them abroad and discouraging them from learning their native language and culture. The mother had wanted the speaker to forget their native tongue and said living abroad would be better. The speaker is now struggling with their identity being disconnected from their home culture and language.

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    A Letter To A Mother Sent Abroad

    Uploaded by

    Lee Suarez
    339 views2 pages
    The speaker, writing to their mother, explains that they will not be coming home for the summer as their mother had requested. The speaker had promised friends that they would spend time at tourist beaches and sites. The speaker reflects on their mother sending them abroad and discouraging them from learning their native language and culture. The mother had wanted the speaker to forget their native tongue and said living abroad would be better. The speaker is now struggling with their identity being disconnected from their home culture and language.

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    A Letter to a Mother Sent Abroad

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    The speaker, writing to their mother, explains that they will not be coming home for the summer as their mother had requested. The speaker had promised friends that they would spend time at tourist beaches and sites. The speaker reflects on their mother sending them abroad and discouraging them from learning their native language and culture. The mother had wanted the speaker to forget their native tongue and said living abroad would be better. The speaker is now struggling with their identity being disconnected from their home culture and language.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as pdf or txt
    339 views2 pages

    A Letter To A Mother Sent Abroad

    Uploaded by

    Lee Suarez
    The speaker, writing to their mother, explains that they will not be coming home for the summer as their mother had requested. The speaker had promised friends that they would spend time at tourist beaches and sites. The speaker reflects on their mother sending them abroad and discouraging them from learning their native language and culture. The mother had wanted the speaker to forget their native tongue and said living abroad would be better. The speaker is now struggling with their identity being disconnected from their home culture and language.

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    © All Rights Reserved
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    of 2

    Text for nos.

    31-50:
    Letter to a Mother from Her Daughter Who was Sent Abroad
    by Shane Carreon

    Dear Mother, as you request, I am not coming home this summer.


    I promised my friends we’d be hitting the beach,
    taking snapshots at touristy places. I kinda know
    some spots, little histories of here and there
    from brochures and hand-me-downs
    stories of how the one who records misheard
    the names of our quaint little towns. Too many of them
    named after open fields and trees, basakan, kalubihan, kaimitohan
    and really,
    only handful of them decent enough for a postcard.
    I like the idea of an island, of living in it, everyone thinks
    its so sunny, the tropical blue, the seas, the waves
    everyone thinks of wakeboarding and surfing and lounging
    on sandy beaches to get a tan.
    Everyone there has a tan. And I had to spend for whitening creams
    because everyone there dislikes tan and I’ve gotten used to
    being called dark.
    Cousin Linda, she’s puti, and she’s beautiful.
    And cousin Monette, who is not half as pretty, not half as tall
    has gone off to marry someone puti. And
    her child named Jessica Lindsay is going to be a showbiz star.
    Uncle Timeo sends everyone home his love
    from Vancouver in a puti balikbayan box.
    You wanted me to go and be a hero.
    When I was young you were proud
    I could speak the stranger’s tongue and you wanted me to
    forget the one we own.
    You said it ain’t worth it. You said
    it’s a burden and I had to let it go. You said
    any place is better than the one where we were.
    Right across the ocean, if I ride the waves.
    In places where they get spring, and their leaves turn
    from green to orange to gold red and fall, and people feel cold.
    But there is snow
    and they could always make company in snowmen
    and I could catch a real snowflake on my hand,
    and it’s going to be a promise come true.
    You said
    and so there is no need to learn the names, the ways
    we call the rain, the sunray, the light, the dark, the gift
    of what is our own: uwan, salisi, habo-habo, bidlisiw, hayag, kangitngit
    kanindot.

    How the sounds close themselves


    to the rhythm of my own breathing. How they remind
    my body of my skin, my flesh, my bones
    the marrow pulsating beneath your own. How you said
    it ain’t worth it, the sound of your mother’s mother tongue,
    poor and illiterate, you said,
    how much you love me, you’re giving me away.

    So I don’t have to learn


    all the names of all the fish caught in our villagers’ nets
    in the dark of mornings when they haul it in
    in time for wet market. So I don’t have to know
    the feel of being on a paddle boat
    waving with the waves waiting for a catch
    that will never be enough for food on our table.
    So I don’t have to learn
    how it is being on your shoes,
    on your worn out slippers. On the very callus of your bare feet.
    Your hands that chose to refuse to teach me
    the names of shells, because you string them like empty dreams
    every day into necklaces meant for the strangers.
    “You are meant for greater things than this,”
    you said. “You will be beautiful,” you said.
    Dear Mother,

    I am beautiful and I am not coming home this summer


    because you told me.
    I promised my friends we’d be hitting the beach,
    we’d be taking snapshots at touristy places
    where there wouldn’t be anyone handing
    us, strangers, handmade seashell necklaces reminding me
    of you, of me, what you thought I would’ve been
    had you let me stay home and taught me
    to speak the language of your mother. But nights,
    when the stranger-friends are gone

    I look at the horizon and wonder how it is called


    in the language I have lost
    in the tongue of my country back home.
    The blue gray sky dusk. What is it’s name
    the sea that divides, the unseen that bridges it
    the restless ghost of my own navel calling
    mother, lemme come home.

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