Question

Read the following poem by Grace Paley and answer the question that follows. Your response should be two to three sentences in length.

"Family" by Grace Paley

My father was brilliant embarrassed funny handsome

my mother was plain serious principled kind

my grandmother was intelligent lonesome for her

other life her dead children silent

my aunt was beautiful bitter angry loving

I fell among these adjectives in earliest childhood

and was nearly buried with opportunity

some of them stuck to me others

finding me American and smooth slipped away

What does the speaker of the poem imply about being American?

Answer 1

The storyteller of "Family" by Grace Paley utilizes a few descriptive words to depict different relatives, and says a portion of the descriptors adhered to her, while others, "discovering me American and smooth disappeared."
This last line proposes that Americans are "smooth," and that descriptive words, or thoughts regarding individuals, can "slip" off them. This appears to imply that Americans are not ready to see past the self-evident; don't look further into a thought.