The Poem I have chosen for this paper is “White Lies” written by Natasha Trethewey. This poem stood out to me because I could envision myself as her while reading. The first phrase of the poem did not fully make sense to me at first, and I had to read it over again a few times until I was able to make some sense of it. “The lies I could tell, when I was growing up light-bright, near-white, high-yellow, red-boned” (Trethewey, 400). I interpreted this to be ways that she described her skin color to others. She wasn’t colored, but rather one of the previous descriptive words, or so she wanted everyone else to think. I found this to be a very creative way for her to describe herself, especially since the tone of the poem leads me to interpret it from her perspective as a little girl.
The second phrase described some of the differences she encountered between the white folks, and the colored. She states “I could act like my homemade dresses came straight out the window of Maison Blanche.” (Trethewey, 400). I believe that Maison Blanche must have been a store that the white folks shopped at. Since she was trying her best to make them believe that she too was a white folk, she did not want them to know that her dresses were made, presumably by her mother. She wanted them to believe she too, shopped at the same stores for her clothing as they did. It seems as if she was just simply trying to fit in and to be liked by the white folks. The line where she writes “Now we have three of us in this class” (Trethewey, 400), I interpreted to mean three white folks since the person speaking was a white girl. This makes me believe that the white folks were not the predominant race at the time, as it seemed the young girl was excited that she has another girl in class to associate with. I found this to be odd however, since she tried so desperately hard to be one of the white folk. I would have imagined that the colored were the minority here. I believe the...