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Rachel Stewart
English 451
12/13/16

The Truth In The Family

In every culture storytelling has always been a way to teach a moral, be a warning,

entertain, educate, or as a way to preserve information. In Blood Ties and Brown Liquor by Sean

Hill, and My Brother Was an Aztec by Natalie Diaz both poets use storytelling of family histories

to convey their haunting, oppression, culture, religion, and self-identity. Sean Hill and Natalie

Diaz allow the reader to be intimately involved with the narrators of these books as they

recounted their family histories through poetry. As Jody Koenig Kellas states, family stories

affect and reflect family culture by communicating who a family is, its norms, its values, its

goals, its identity. The reader is allowed into the family, showing in part a larger part of

African-American, and Native American cultures, not only showing deep oppression in two

different cultures, but also difficult struggles that their narrators are deal with inside their family

dynamics.

Avery Gordon expresses in her book Ghostly Matters, that to be haunted is to be tied to

social and historical effects. In Blood Ties and Brown Liquor by Sean Hill and When My

Brother Was an Aztec by Natalie Diaz mark their works with a recurring theme depicting how

family histories can be relentlessly haunting experiences. The haunting transforms, and shapes

some of these characters. Avery Gordon states haunting is also the remain of turmoil This

statement ties to both works of poetry. In Blood Ties & Brown Liquor the characters are haunted

by specific places in the small town of Milledgeville. These place seem to be the continued

oppressors. In My Brother Was an Aztec the characters are tormented by a brother whose drug

addiction is unfailing. In the poem The State House Aflame 1833 by Hill the title positions the
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reader in a specific place and time, beyond that the reader is given a story of a slave named Sam

who ironically saves the state house. The last lines read, The roof the roof the roof is on fire, /

We dont need no water, let the motherfucker burn (20). The italicized parts of the poem seem

to imply the white people speaking, they have no regard for what happens to Sam the slave. After

reading the last lines racial turmoil and oppression feels just as alive in present day as it was in

1833. Throughout the poem Hill uses punctuation, but the last line is free of a period, or

exclamation point, but the statement is clear, racism in the United States is alive and thriving.

Sams freedom seems uncertain with lines like:

heedless of his own safety, by appropriating

$1,600 for the purchase

of his freedom

from John Marlow. (20)

Just as freedom for African-Americans today seems to be uncertain and haunting. Haunting

urges us to look, commands us to pay attention. Through this specific place, this history, this

story Hill urges his reader to pay attention. In the poem Formication, the perception that insects

are crawling all over your body, Diaz introduces the reader to the speakers five different

definitions of the word. Each definition its own story:

2. aka crank bugs

..

there really are things skittering, creeping

across his inner arms, moving and hot ,sweating (57)

Diazs poetic language leaves the reader feeling formicated themselves. In another stanza the

narrator goes on to state:


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5. aka meth sores

We are too weak to say the word intervention.

When my brother nods, off, I write it on his arms and face in cursive

with invisible inkNo one wants to embarrass him. (59)

Diaz italicizes the word intervention, it holds more weight in this context, the speaker says she

writes in invisible ink, but the image of this word scrawled on the brothers arms and face,

doesnt escape me. The image is as vivid as if I wrote it myself, I picture it on him for the entire

book. Intervention, or the cause for intervention, the substance abuse in this poem is urging to be

looked at, associated with. It is scream to be acknowledge, Diaz disturbs her readers with this

fact not just in this instance, but throughout the entire book.

Humans beings have been using the tradition of narrative storytelling since before

biblical times, one could even say its the stories that make us who we are. Stories are rooted in

culture, as well as religion. Both works of poetry are deeply rooted in culture, which plays a part

in religion. In Blood Ties and Brown Liquor, God and the Lord are heavily mentioned. In When

My Brother Was an Aztec we experience references made to characters in religion such as Jesus.

These stories being told about religion directly relate to the cultures being depicting in the books.

In the article Stories of the South, Stories of Suffering, Stories of God by Melissa Elliott

Griffith she states "Nowhere else have I heard people talk so often of the Lord'What is this

about?' I have been asking myself. And, as I watch their faces and listen to the music of their

words, I realize that in Mississippi when people speak of the Lord, then they are speaking of the

matters that are very important to them." I am not trying to generalize, but it seems Southern

culture is deeply rooted in Christian religion, and Hill displays this but tend to be illustrating a

negative side to this religious outlook. In Hills poems Joe Chappels Foot Log Bottom Blues and
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Words Like Rivers have different men speakers, both are drunk and are directly talking to the

lord. They talk of liquor, love, and their worries. The poems move and sound like blues songs,

and prove a point to how affluent music is to African-American culture. Another example of Hill

using a story to address religion and culture is the poem A Negro Teachers Bible. Of paper they

made themselves / a civilization of letters, footnotes, and lies. (14) These lines express what

important documents are usually put in a bible, and the word lies expresses negativity toward

the Bible itself. The poem goes on fill his tongue with a wasps sting. / A civilization of letters,

footnotes, and lies. (14) The character in the poem is angered, and the repetition of lines in the

poem directs the reader to the importance of the repeated lines. By not naming the man, Hill is

generalizing the character this indicates the prevalence of the bible in African-American culture.

This poem also gives the reader another negative impression of religion for the Bible is holding

the lies. Diaz also correlates religion heavily in her book. Diazs narrator tells the reader

farfetched stories of the characters that are within religions. Diaz narrators seem to constantly

question the role religion plays in their lives. Religion in My Brother Was an Aztec appears

mythological. Based on the book tribal culture is mythological, and heavily rooted in nature. For

example, in the poem If Eve Side-Stealer & Mary Busted-Chest Ruled the World presents as

poem pf questions about the characters in religion. Not only is religion questioned, but also

heavily incorporated with the oppression of Indians. The poem asks,

What if Mary was an Indian

& when Gabriel visited her wigwam

she was away at a monthly WIC clinic

receiving eggs, boxed cheese

& peanut butter instead of Jesus? (25)


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The poem is hostile towards religion, and delivers vivid imagery to depict traumatic events that

has happened to the people of her culture. It questions the religious roles of Adam, Eve, Gabriel,

and God. The poems stories affect how the reader views culture and within that culture how

religion is viewed. Both Hill and Diaz seem to interpret religion in a slightly negative aspect. The

poems allow the reader to see a new aspect of African-American culture, and Indian culture

based in religion. It allows the reader to question what they assumed about either cultures, and

the cultures religious views.

Family in both Hills work and Diazs is one big central theme. Family is broken down

into individual people, and then we have the self, yet as humans we constantly struggle with self-

identity. Who are we, and how do we define I? This is why family is so important, because

without them there is no I. Without family, no cultural, no background, nothing to tie us,

down, or up, or whichever which way they string us along. The Hills and Diazs books convey

stories of family, expressing the double edge sword on what family is; love, compassion,

devotion, linkage, but also heartbreak, anger, frustration, and devastation. Family is also depicted

as communal. Storytelling is communal. Identity also emerges as a function central to family

stories. The content of family stories often reflects a familys values, culture, and its collective

meanings. (Kellas, 367) Hills poem Hands 1921 gifts the reader with beautiful imagery of the

shades of color of some of the mens hands in the family:

Silass hands,

not the creamy brown

of hens eggs

like his fathers

or the red-brown
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of rust on a hoe

like Benjamins

or the golden brown

of scuppernongs

on the vine

in late summer, (46)

The poem shows with all the different shades how family is linked, yet that we are different. It

goes on to present us with the future of Silass farewell to Milledgeville as he leaves for the first

time in excitement. The poem continues to convey that we hold on to family linkage, and

hometown ties, but we do carry our own self-identity, and can reach new perspectives with self-

discovery. Diaz writes a similar poem, Of Course She Looked Back it juxtaposes Hills on the

viewpoint of self-identity and finding ones self.

Her husband uttered, Keep going.

Whispered, Stay the course, or

Baby, forget about it. She couldnt.

Now a bursting garden of fire

the city bloomed to flame after flame

like hot fruit in a persimmon orchard. (88-89)

The character in Diaz poem feels as if she is abandoning her linkage. She feels guilty for leaving,

her self-identity so deeply rooted in family, and culture that leaving destroys it all. Once again

Diaz uses brilliant nature images to intensely metaphorically describe this womans home,
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family, and community falling apart without her. Both poems depict that self-identity in fact does

emerge in family, and culture.

Storytelling has always been an important part of any culture, it is past, it is present, and

it is future. When stories are told we are reflective, teller and reader gain knowledge from this

art. Family plays a huge role in the stories we tell. They are our linkage to the past, and to life.

Our histories, our memories make us the people we are, our families, make up the communities

we come from and the cultures we express. Throughout Blood Ties and Brown Liquor by Sean

Hill, and My Brother was an Aztec by Natalie Diaz the reader is invited through family histories

to experience private aspects and communities that reveal fresh insights on African-American

and Indian cultures that deliver haunting, oppression, religion, and self-identity.
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Works Cited

Diaz, Natalie. When My Brother Was an Aztec. Port Townsend, WA: Copper Canyon, 2012.

Print.

Gordon, Avery. Ghostly Matters: Haunting and the Sociological Imagination. Minneapolis: U of

Minnesota, 1997. Print. Works Cited

Griffith, Melissa Elliott. "Stories of the South, Stories of Suffering, Stories of God." Family

Systems Medicine 13.1 (1995): 3-9.

Hill, Sean. Blood Ties & Brown Liquor: Poems. Athens: U of Georgia, 2008. Print.

Kellas, Jody Koenig. "Family Ties: Communicating Identity Through Jointly Told Family

Stories This Paper Is Based on the Author's Dissertation Study and Was Presented on the

Top Four Panel of the Family Communication Division at the National Communication

Association Convention, November 2003, Miami, FL." Communication Monographs

72.4 (2005): 365-89.


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