The Deliverer Flashcards
OUR LADY OF THE LIGHT
KERALA
The sister here is telling my mother
How she came to collect children
Because they were crippled or dark or girls.
Sister - Nun but also only familial relation
Enjambment - creates a sense of urgency
The alliteration of /c/ - emphasizes the jarring atmosphere
Repetition of conjunction equates
Crippled
- disability to being darkly skinned and a girl
-discrimination on ability, race, and gender
Polysyndeton -> all these traits are equally undesirable
Found naked in the streets,
Covered in garbage, stuffed in bags,
Abandoned at their doorstep.
Found / covered / abandoned - these are a verbs often used for inanimate objects
Asyndeton -> disturbing casual list / just a few of the scenarios that come to mind and so there are many more horrifying accounts
Naked - no human dignity
Garbage - equating the girls to the same worth / you throw unwanted things / just as the children are unwanted
Fragmented sentences - pervasive nature (tercet) and extended list
Doorstep - home / left out of the family / also where deliveries are typically received / in this case however they are giving the child away
One of them was dug up by a dog,
Thinking the head barely poking above the ground
Was bone or wood, something to chew.
/d/ alliteration emphasizes the horror and brutality of this situation
Dug - suggests the baby was left out of sight / saddening that it is a dog not human
Bone or wood - inanimate object equating / or a chew toy / nonchalance of the description becomes alarming
This is the one my my mother will bring
One - universal/singular line / only one saved
MILWAUKEE AIRPORT, USA
The parents wait at the gates.
They are American so they know about ceremony
And tradition, about doing things right.
They haven’t seen or touched her yet.
Don’t know of her fetish for plucking hair off hands,
Or how her mother tried to bury her.
Shift in location -> Kerala is more poverty-stricken than Milwaukee
About doing things right -> Ambiguous
-Implies Americans aren’t going to abandon this baby the same way her mother in India did
-They are able to do the right things because of their more fortunate situation
“They haven’t seen or touched her yet”
They still do not know her trauma
Fetish -> suggests neurosis that results from her early trauma or it is just simply a quirk of hers / either way there is a clear separation
American - developed country/abilities to help these girls / the idea that resources and conditions are what is needed to become a good parent / loving is not enough / India the best thing for the child is death only in America can a better life be provided
Delivery of a child - objectification
Americans -> ceremony and tradition/repetition passing on / from parents to parents
But they are crying.
We couldn’t stop crying, my mother said,
Feeling the strangeness of her empty arms.
Diacope of crying -> emphasizes the emotional intensity of the situation
Deliverer
-Something that is transported and headed to a recipient
-One sense the deliver is the speakers mother who is bringing the baby from Indian to the family in America
-Mother who delivers the child / invisible due to her geographic and economic distance from the people who adopt her baby
This girl grows up on videotapes,
Sees how she’s passed from a woman
To woman. She returns to twilight corners.
Repetition of “woman” -> kinship between the girl’s adoptive mother and the speaker’s own mother
Twilight -> refers to the time of day when the sun is no longer visible but the light still lingers -> whilst the girl has been detached from her origins they still lie in some way within her / memories are still hidden / trauma the girl has faced does not disappear but affects her in unseen ways
To the day of her birth,
How it happens in some desolate hut
Outside village boundaries
Outside suggests Taboo - infanticide and female babies
Isolated - legality
Where mothers go to squeeze out life,
Watch body slither out from body,
/s/ - squeeze and slither sibilance creates an emotionless tone contrasted by the typical joyfulness of birth
Squeeze - macabre pun
Slither - zoomorphism/dehumanisation/imagery of snakes/imagery that suggests the revulsion felt / must detach the emotions from the baby as they know they will have to abandon them
Diminishing stanzas - strong ending
Feel for penis or no penis,
Toss the baby to the heap of others,
Only focus is on the penis / the gender / highlights the cold and cynical way these babies value is assessed
“heap” - reminder that there are many others / patriarchy and poverty at its most devastating
Trudge home to lie down for their men again.
Again - repeat the same process
Trudge - Unwilling / forcing themselves / passivity
Lie down - Passive
Without the educational, job, or reproductive freedom -> change circumstances is impossible
