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.
One thought on “Lorianny Neris, Week 13”
Interesting interpretation. I feel like most of us were a bit confused by this poem but I like to see how we all interpret it differently. I too always think I will understand a poem or figure out it’s meaning on the first reading, and I definitely did that with this same poem too. I didn’t get the same interpretation as you from the story. I did get the race part of it but I didn’t think that she was lying to make white people be nicer to her. I just thought she was lying to try to fit in more with the people around her.