Comparing The Gift And Notes Of A Native Son

Poetry Essay The Gift and Notes of a Native Son are written by different authors who not only writes in different styles, but also differ in their background. The author of The Gift Li-Young Lee was born in Djakarta, Indonesia in 1957 to Chinese political exiles with a grandfather who is the first president of the Republic of China. Due to Anti-Chinese Sentiment in Indonesia, Lee was forced to flee to the United States in 1964. Lee then attended the University of Pittsburgh where he gained the inspiration to write poems, many depicting parts of his life. As the writer of Notes of a Native Son, James Baldwin was considered one of the greatest American essayist in the later part of the twentieth century. Baldwin was born in 1924, he

In the Gift, Lee started with the single act of his father who pulled a metal splinter from his palm in a gentle manner when Lee was a small child. Notes of a Native Son began with the exact date on the death of Baldwin’s father. While both writers have vivid memories of their fathers, Lee wrote mainly about how gentle his father was and how he did not feel a thing even as a splinter is being removed from his palm. Baldwin on the other hand remembered his father as a handsome man who could be seen almost as an African tribal chieftain with the right kind of warpaint, but he also remembered his father as the most bitter man he could ever remember. He remembered his father as a conflicted person who at one hand is proud of his color, but on the other hand, is also humiliated and found that he has bleak boundaries in life due to his color. Lee and Baldwin wrote of different experiences, but with both being of their fathers, it seems as if they are bonded in some

Lee was able to use the gentleness he experienced first hand from his father on his wife who also had a splinter. He knew how to treat her with care and how to distract her so she does not cry out when the splinter is removed almost as if he is his own father and his wife is his seven year old self. From his father, he was able to learn compassion and from his father he was able to care for his own family. Baldwin learned from his father that even though as colored people, they are considered free at the time, there are still rampant racism throughout the United States. It doesn’t matter if he was in Harlem or New Jersey, he experienced the kind of racism that hardened his father and made him such a bitter man. He could see the hypocrisy of justice in terms of racism and sees himself just as a pawn in a much larger game of life where everyone was just playing their part with people such as him finding himself oppressed. It is then that he understands why his father is the way he is and he finds himself starting to feel the same feelings experienced by his