Cycle 17: Lost Sister

During these past couple of weeks our class has been reading a few short stories and poems. One of the poems our class has read was Lost Sister. Lost Sister is a poem about a young woman who explains the situations of living in China, and then traveling to America in search of freedom and possibilities she could not obtain in China. One of the quotes I am fond of in this poem comes from the first sentence, “In China, even the peasants named their first daughters Jade-.” In China, Jade is a precious stone that is irreplaceable if ever lost. The reason why I like this quote is because it shows how daughters are referred to in China. This one sentence expresses how women in the Chinese culture are rare and beautiful even if they are just peasants.

A question raised by our teacher, Mr. Watson, was what does this poem say about how our “self” is created? By reading Lost Sister I realized you and only you can create your own “self”. In this poem, a young woman named Jade tells about her life in China. She explains how moving freely was a luxury taken from her and all girls at birth. Jade later creates her own “self” by moving to America. She broke through the old traditions and started something new. In this poem, Jade discovers that in America men and women are given equal opportunities. Jade is a perfect example on how to create your own “self”. To be your own person you must take life into your own hands. You must lead by example and not follow in other people’s footsteps. And you must live up to all that you can be. Once you have done all of that, then you can say that you have created your own “self”.