Mnemonic Li Young Lee Summary

Sometimes people need to hang on to difficult memories because without them they would feel lost. In short, it is better to feel pain than nothing at all. Memories are made up of the highest and lowest points in your life and all the little ones in between. The poet, Li Young Lee writes, “even when it’s painful, memory is sweet.” Even with the good and bad memories, the feeling of belonging overcomes the sense of being lost.

The speaker in the poem in Mnemonic, by Li Young Lee, is a grown man who is looking back on his childhood and focusing on a sweater that helps revive the memories he has with his father. He is sad and missing his father, remembering his past. The kind of relationship the speaker has with his father is one that is unique. He talks about how he wants his memories to stay with him but he also states that his memories won’t last, meaning some are good and some are bad. His father

so he spanked me.

It hurt him to do so. He did it daily.”

The speaker is comparing his father to God and even though some of the memories he has recovered are painful, they are also slender. He is admitting to himself what his father did and he is able to overlook this because he enjoys the little memories he has, even when it’s painful, it is sweet.

The blue sweater that is talked about throughout the poem is the source of all the speaker’s memories, which he uses as a mnemonic device. It helps him remember the memories he has with his father. The poem begins with the line, “I was cold once. So my father took off his blue sweater” and ends the same way. Wearing the sweater makes the speaker feel proud of his father because he has had it since he came to America which is big component in the family’s past. He grew up with the sweater and as the years went by, memories kept getting added to this piece of clothing that astonishingly holds his whole life. The sweater is portrayed as cheap and old but what it contains is