Janice Mirikitani Suicide Note Summary

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In the poem “Suicide Note” by Janice Mirikitani, the author goes into the different emotions a young college student who is a woman experiences which leads to taking her own life and leaving behind an emotional suicide note to get her point across to her parents. The themes used in this setting represent the pressure to succeed, the feeling of not being good enough, and the struggles faced by a young Asian American college student wanting to not only make her family proud but also strive for success as an individual. In the 1980’s, young Asian American women faced the dichotomy of academic ambition and emotional struggles. They took on some pretty big traditional gender roles all while entering a professional workplace career; they also were seeking higher education to …show more content…

The claim that this poem seems to have made is that the topic of gender roles in an Asian American household plays a key factor. In the poem, the narrator states “If only I were a son, shoulders broad as the sunset threading through pine, I would see the light in my mother's eyes or the golden pride reflected in my father's dream of my wide, male hands worthy of work and comfort.” (lines 10-16) Expressing if she had been a boy, then maybe she would have felt the mother and father would have been more proud of her hard-working efforts. This shows how gender norms within their culture came into play, carrying a lot of pressure. The narrator wanted to strive for a better future for herself but compared her gender roles in the eyes of what her parents may have thought of her because of her role as a woman and not feeling good enough to please her parents and those expectations the parents had on her versus to the expectations of what they expected from a young

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