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    "The Secret Language" By: Luisa Igloria

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    GiGi Advincula
    The poem describes a Filipina woman named Christina who has learned to assimilate into a new culture by changing her appearance and adopting a new name and religion. However, in private moments she thinks back to her cultural heritage, like braiding her hair and wearing beads as she did in her youth. While she performs her role in the new society, part of her identity remains tied to the traditions and people of her past.

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    "The Secret Language" By: Luisa Igloria

    Uploaded by

    GiGi Advincula
    1K views2 pages
    The poem describes a Filipina woman named Christina who has learned to assimilate into a new culture by changing her appearance and adopting a new name and religion. However, in private moments she thinks back to her cultural heritage, like braiding her hair and wearing beads as she did in her youth. While she performs her role in the new society, part of her identity remains tied to the traditions and people of her past.

    Original Title

    The Secret Language

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    The poem describes a Filipina woman named Christina who has learned to assimilate into a new culture by changing her appearance and adopting a new name and religion. However, in private moments she thinks back to her cultural heritage, like braiding her hair and wearing beads as she did in her youth. While she performs her role in the new society, part of her identity remains tied to the traditions and people of her past.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as docx, pdf, or txt
    1K views2 pages

    "The Secret Language" By: Luisa Igloria

    Uploaded by

    GiGi Advincula
    The poem describes a Filipina woman named Christina who has learned to assimilate into a new culture by changing her appearance and adopting a new name and religion. However, in private moments she thinks back to her cultural heritage, like braiding her hair and wearing beads as she did in her youth. While she performs her role in the new society, part of her identity remains tied to the traditions and people of her past.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as docx, pdf, or txt
    of 2

    “The Secret Language”

    By: Luisa Igloria

    1 I have learned your speech


    2 Fair stranger; for you
    3 I have oiled my hair
    4 And coiled it tight
    5 Into a braid as thick
    6 And beautiful as a serpent
    7 In your story of Eden

    8 For you, I have covered


    9 My breasts and hidden,
    10 Among the folks of my surrendered
    11 Inheritance, the beads
    12 I have sworn since girlhood.

    13 It is fifty years now


    14 Since the day my father
    15 Took me to the school in Bua
    16 A headman’s terrified
    17 Peace – gift. In the doorway
    18 The teacher stood, her hair
    19 The bleached color of corn,
    20 Watching with bird’s eyes.

    21 Now, I am Christina.
    22 I am told I can make lace
    23 Fine enough to lay upon the altar
    24 Of a cathedral in Europe.
    25 But this is a place
    26 That I will never see.

    27 I cooked the tourists at an in


    28 They praise my lemon pie
    29 And my English, which they say
    30 Is faultless. I smile
    31 And look past the window,
    32 Imagining father’s and grandfather’s cattle
    33 Grazing by the smoke trees.
    34 But it is evening, and these
    35 Are ghosts

    36 In the night.
    37 When I am alone at last,
    38 I lie uncorseted
    39 Upon the iron bed
    40 Composing my lost beads
    41 Over my chest, dreaming back
    42 Each flecked and opalescent
    43 Color, crooning the names,
    44 Along with mine:
    45 Binaay, Binaay.

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