Women In America

The only thing worse for a woman than living an oppressed life is realizing that she has inadvertently conditioned her own daughter to follow in her footsteps. Mothers have been feeding their daughters the same fairytale for decades. They all speak of how difficult their lives have been, and how they want their child to live a better life than they did. They tell their daughters that if they marry a man with money, or one that lives in a place that’s “better for women,” things will be so much better, but there is no such place. A people can’t be oppressed without the promise of a better tomorrow. Women in America, as well as in other parts of the world have all been generationally brainwashed to promote their own mistreatment, and further empower
In the poem, the mother sang lullabies to her daughter, the narrator, in Tagalog. The mother married a white man, which explains why she calls the lullaby “foreign tongue”. Many non-immigrants don’t bother to learn about an immigrant’s culture or even something as simple as learning the name of the language they speak. Instead they call it a foreign language, which depreciates the uniqueness of a specific language and groups all non-English languages together. The mother marrying a white man shows she wanted to assimilate into American culture, possibly just for the sake of her future daughter. It also shows the lengths the mother went through – losing some of her culture by marrying a non-Filipino man – to make things easier for her daughter. The mother, like most other immigrants, advises her daughter to marry a good man from the same country as her. Many people feel as though this will help preserve their culture, and will make it easier for them since both partners have the same culture. Although the narrator is biracial, her mother’s heritage is strong, and by doing things such as singing Tagalog lullabies and telling her to marry a Filipino man, it allows the daughter to be immersed in the Filipino culture and appreciate it for the rest of her