Blog 9

Joy Harjo’s “The Path to the Milky Way Leads through Los Angeles,” Mitsuye Yamada’a “A Bedtime Story,” and Bharati Mukherjee’s “A Father” illustrate similar ideas relating to joy in the natural world. “The Path to the Milky Way Leads through Los Angeles” is a poem about finding a diamond in the rough. “A Bedtime Story” depicts beauty in tough times. “A Father” is about looking for joy in the wrong places. . “The Path to the Milky Way Leads through Los Angeles” portrays the ideals celebrated in America that are not valued by the author.
Harjo’s poem describes the beauty of nature through phrases such as “dark sky on the path to the Milky Way,” “it’s perpetually summer here, and beautiful,” and “starry road.” However, Harjo however couples these depictions of beauty with illustrations of the pollution and wrong ideals found in America. The poem describes the “whine of civilization,” “the city named for angels appears naked and stripped,” and “the minerals of planets in hamburgers.” Similar to Barbara Hamby’s “Ode to America,” Harjo points out everything unsophisticated she sees in the idolized celebrity world of Los Angeles. Similarly, Harjo says in the last line, “But like a crow I collect the shine of anything beautiful I can find.” I interpreted this as finding beauty underneath all of the disgust and filth that humanity as compiled throughout centuries. Despite the “trash of humans” the crow is able to dig to find something precious.
“A Bedtime Story” also shows a natural view of beauty. The story in the poem describes an old frustrated woman who cannot find a place to stay in the town. When she stops to catch her breath after repeated rejection, the old woman sees a splendid sight when the clouds in the night sky break to show a full moon and countless stars. The speaker shouts at the conclusion of the story “That’s the end?” Like Harjo, Yamada shows the impatience and little sophistication with which America could be viewed. The author here makes a cultural distinction between American and Japanese by saying that the American child is not appreciative of the beauty of the natural world.
“A Father” also shows cultural distinction between the Hindu father and his also Indian but Americanized wife and daughter. Throughout the story, the father describes his wife’s nagging and daughter’s dismissal of his superstitions. He continues to practice his religion despite his family’s choice of agnosticism. When he notices that his daughter is pregnant, Mr. Bhowmick is happy and excited to perhaps have a grandson. HE imagines the situations in which his daughter would introduce him to the father. He also thinks about how his daughter might abort the baby. He is so full of emotions ranging from happiness for his daughter to disappointment in the public eye. At the end of the story, Mr. Bhowmick is told that the baby was created in a lab, and unnaturally placed into his daughter. Mr. Bhowmick is so distressed that he hits his daughter with a rolling pin. THE author is depicting the different ideals of the different worlds in which he and his daughter grew up. When he grew up, something like this would never occur where he was from. However, in America, his daughter is very capable of this freedom. The father is shamed by the actions of his daughter. This story is also an example of looking for joy in the wrong places. The daughter wants to be happy so she is artificially inseminated so that she can experience the joy of motherhood. Instead of looking for happiness in a natural way, she goes against what her father and mother’s values to do something that was unnatural and something that should be reserved for different situations.