Inescapable History

The most dominant theme in "For a New Citizen of These United States" is the poet's own inability to escape the memories of his family's troubled past. Tied directly to the personal tragedies are the social tragedies that Lee witnessed as a young boy. The childhood he recalls is full of persecution and fear: tales of his father's imprisonment in an Indonesian jail and the family's eventual life in exile after the father's escape. For Lee, the present is continually infiltrated by the past. His thoughts, actions, and beliefs are all shaped by the disturbing history that followed him throughout five years of traveling from country to country and into his youth and adulthood in the United States.

From start to finish, this poem discloses an ongoing struggle between living in the past and letting it go. Lee pretends to be able, even if unwillingly, to stop...