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Jacqueline Essig
Seminar 2
1/25/02
Striving for Perfection
Family. What do you think of when you hear that
word? Some people think of relatives or the people
that they live with. Maybe a stepfather, stepmother,
brothers, or sisters. To me, family is love,
devotion, and caring. People of a family want to be
together and love to do things for each other, such as
do the dishes or wash the car for them. The poems
that most represent my family values are “Knoxville,
Tennessee” by Nikki Giovanni and “Those Winter
Sundays” by Robert Hayden. The one that does not
represent my family as much as the others is “Two
Kinds” by Amy Tan.
I love the poem “Knoxville, Tennessee” by Nikki
Giovanni. It gives me a sense of people wanting to be
together, family, wanting to be together. Giovanni
wrote this poem so that it is told through a child
(under the age of ten). The child’s world is made up
of his or her family. He or she is mostly with the
family “at the church picnic” (Giovanni 50, line 12)
or “at the church / homecoming” (Giovanni 50,
lines17-18). The child goes places with the family
and is with them all of the time. He or she has not
reached the teenage stage of rebellion and does not
mind being with his or her parents. That is why I
like this poem. It shows love for family through the
uncontaminated eyes of a child.
“Those Winter Sundays” represents family devotion to
me. The father in the poem is so devoted to his
family that he gets “up early / and put his clothes on
in the blueback cold” (Hayden 51, lines 1-2) to warm
the house for them. He does not care about anything
except driving the cold away for his family. That is
the kind of thing that is done out of true, deep,
unconditional love. Families stick together and
support each other, even if one is not so kind, like
the teenager who fears “the chronic angers of the
house” (Hayden 51, line 9). Families forgive, forget,
and keep loving each other.
“Two Kinds” is a story that does not represent my
idea of family. The young daughter (Tan) does not
obey her mother and continually disappoints her. Her
mother wants her to learn piano and believes that she
has talent, but Tan does not agree. “Unlike my
mother, I did not believe that I could be anything. I
could only be me” (Tan 35). Tan keeps this attitude
until her mother dies. She tries to play her old
piano and picks up the notes easily. She then
realizes that her mother was right, but it is too
late. Her mother will never know that Tan did care
and is very sorry for not believing in herself. It is
very sad, and I do not want to have a family that
disappoints each other like Tan did to her mother.
My ideas of family are based on love, devotion, and
caring. My family does not always show these values,
but no one is perfect. “Knoxville, Tennessee” by
Nikki Giovanni and “Those Winter Sundays” by Robert
Hayden best represent my family values. “Two Kinds”
is not the kind of family that I would like to have.
I like these poems and the story because they
represent some of my ideas of a perfect family, or
what I do not want my family to be like. Maybe if I
could take some of these ideas to heart, my family
would be one step closer to being perfect.
Works Cited
Giovanni, Nikki. “Knoxville, Tennessee.” Bridges:
Literature across Cultures. Gilbert H. Muller, John A. Williams. McGraw-Hill, 1994.
49-50.
Hayden, Robert. “Those Winter Sundays.” Bridges:
Literature across Cultures. Gilbert H. Muller, John A. Williams. McGraw-Hill, 1994.
51-52.
Tan, Amy. “Two Kinds.” Bridges: Literature across
Cultures. Gilbert H. Muller,. John A. Williams. McGraw-Hill, 1994. 29-36.
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