Lorianny Neris, Week 13

While reading poems I always have a problem which is I always think I will understand it on the first reading and feel like there’s something wrong with me since I never understand what it means immediately. This is the prior assumption I made, of the three mentioned in “how to read a poem.” While reading “White lies” by Natasha Trethewey I started reading so confidently and thought I could understand it at first reading just by reading its title. When I was done I noticed I didn’t get its meaning or what was really behind it and had to go back, read it slowly, and analyze it. At first, I thought it was just about a little girl lying, but after reading it back, word by word, I understood it had something to do with color and race. “I could even

keep quiet, quiet as kept,

like the time a white girl said

(squeezing my hand), Now

we have three of us in this class.” The girl felt like lying was the only way white people would be nice to her. She would lie about where she lived, and also about being African American. 

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