All three works, Joy Harjo’s “The Path to the Milky Way Leads through Los Angeles,” Mitsuye Yamada’s “A Bedtime Story,” and, Bharati Mukerijee’s, “A Father,” all present themes of relationships among people, families, different cultures, and also, of different social classes.

In, “The Path to the Milky Way,” the speaker says in the first line, “there are strangers above me, below me and all around me and we are all/ strange in this place of recent invention.” This opening statement tells us that we are all strangers to one another. If we all are strangers, then whom we matter to is a question asked by the speaker in lines 10-12. The speaker then suggests a sense of disunity in our culture if we are capable of selling our “souls for less/ than a song to a stranger who will sell it for a profit/ until you are owned by a company of strangers.”

The short story, “A Father,” talks about the disconnection in an Indian family living in the United States. This story presents us with conflicting ideas on culture, religion, education, and other pressing issues. We have a father who is so completely absorbed in his Indian heritage that he cannot accept his daughter’s chosen path of life. He despises his wife for forcing their move to America, for her cooking a week’s worth of meals on the weekends, and dislikes the fact that she is smarter than he. Then we are presented with his daughter—an all-American type—career driven, head strong, and open to American culture; and she is opened to independence and raising a child on her own. We are then presented with the mother—who at first seems to be all for the new American culture, when we are told of how she clashes with her Indian neighbors when she executes radical ideas (hiring women of lower castes,) and again when she makes the decision to move to America. However, we see her heritage shine through when we are told of the daughter’s pregnancy. Through this situation we are able to see that even within families, we have disunity. Because each of the family members have had different upbringings (in different countries, as well as different points of view due to gender,) their worldviews clash. This takes the concept of the first poem one step further to say that not only among strangers, but also among allies, we have a lack of trust, love, and reliance.

The last poem, “A Bedtime Story,” tells a story of an old woman who is able to experience the wonders of life and nature because everyone refused to give her shelter. I think that this poem is telling us two things. First, that one is not to expect much from strangers, but secondly, do not let rejection and hate make you miss out on really great moments in life.