Turtle Soup by Marilyn Chin

Turtle Soup

You go home one evening tired from work,

and your mother boils you turtle soup.

Twelve hours hunched over the hearth

(who knows what else is in that cauldron).

You say, "Ma, you've poached the symbol of long life;

that turtle lived four thousand years, swam

the Wei, up the Yellow, over the Yangtze.

Witnessed the Bronze Age, the High Tang,

grazed on splendid sericulture."

(So, she boils the life out of him.)

"All our ancestors have been fools.

Remember Uncle Wu who rode ten thousand miles

to kill a famous Manchu and ended up

with his head on a pole? Eat, child,

its liver will make you strong."

"Sometimes you're the life, sometimes the sacrifice."

Her sobbing is inconsolable.

So, you spread that gentle napkin

over your lap in decorous Pasadena.

Baby, some high priestess has got it wrong.

The golden decal on the green underbelly

says "Made in Hong Kong."

Is there nothing left but the shell

and humanity's strange inscriptions,

the songs, the rites, the oracles?

Explorations of the Text

1. Notice the author’s choice of the word “cauldron” in line 4. What images or connections does this word evoke? Why might the author have chosen “cauldron” rather than pot?

Cauldron means large cooking equipment that made from metal with a lid and handle. It is used for cooking over an open fire. In the poem, the author uses the word “cauldron” instead of pot because the cauldron is synonym with the use for making the potion or medicine.  The mother cooks the turtle soup for twelve hours which is requires a lot of time in the cauldron solely for her daughter’s health which is unacceptable by the daughter as in line 4 “(who knows what else is in that cauldron).”

2. Chin refers to “the Wei”, “the Yellow” and “the Yangtze.” Why does she reference these rivers in China? Why not include the Nile, the Amazon, or the Mississippi?

Chin refers to the Wei, the Yellow and the Yangtze as the reference because in this poem, the rivers are the important rivers that are significant to the Chinese identity.  “That turtle lived four thousand years swam the Wei, up the Yellow, over the Yangtze.” reflects the historical places in China.

3. What is the tone of this poem?

The tone of this poem is ridicule. The mother and the daughter have the argument of regarding the turtle. The daughter said  "Ma, you've poached the symbol of long life” as the mother boils the turtle because the narrator finds that the idea  is totally ridiculous due to her understanding in Chinese culture. She  believes that turtle is a symbol in Chinese tradition. In line 17 “her sobbing is inconsolable” shows that the argument between them has leads to the mother’s cries.

 Ideas for writing

1. “Sometimes you're the life, sometimes the sacrifice.” Write about this quote within the context of an immigrant family. What might a family gain or lose by moving to a new land?

Based on this quote, mostly the purpose of migrating to another country is because in search of better life for the sake of family and loved one. In order to gain the benefit that they seek for, they have to lose on something precious as the exchange. They not only have to leave their homeland, but there is something more important beyond that, for example their identity. Sometimes, when an immigrant is moving to new land, they also have to sacrifice their culture in order to survive and accepted by the society.

The quote “Sometimes you’re the life, sometimes the sacrifice” in his poem indicates the fate of their culture when they migrate to certain country, far from their homeland, China to settle down in Pasadena, America. The author made this quote as a question of whether the culture which they have practice for a long time ago will be preserved or it will be fade away through the time In this poem, the mother cooks the turtle soup as the symbol of sacrificing the culture because she has grown up in China but then migrates to America. So, the daughter thinks that she has an important role  to keeping it alive by reminding her mother about their culture. Through this poem, the narrator emphasizes that the turtle’s fate as the symbol of Chinese tradition is unpredictable which reflects to the immigrants who still can practice their culture and tradition or it end up with the cultural extinction.

Group members: Farid (leader), Yvonne, Izu, Mira

Work cited:

Chin, Marilyn. "Turtle Soup." Portable Legacies. Eds. Schmidt, Jan Zlotnik and Lynne Crockett,
Boston: Cencage Learning Wadsworth, 2009. 419