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COLD SHOULDERS & EVIL EYES
: STEADYING GAZES & WARM EMBRACES
Inclusion and Exclusion in Our Daily Lives
PART I:  CHILD'S VIEW

JODI L. HOTTEL


LOOK ALIKE


In a darkened theater you stare
as Shirley Temple dances on the screen—
those chubby cheeks and beaming eyes
that make everyone smile.
“You look just like her!”
all the adults tell you.
So you practice your curtsy,
pointing to the dimple on your cheek,
flashing that smile that says you’ll be a star.

When did you discover
that what people told you was a lie?
You can never be the next Shirley Temple
with your jet black hair,
your slanting eyes.



image for "Look Alike"

DISCUSSION QUESTION


What idealized images did you grow up with as a child that came to seem as alluring and alienating as Shirley Temple was to girls of different races and religions in the 1930s and 1940s?


AUTHOR'S COMMENTARY


     My mother has always had a movie star’s smile. Even now, although she’s 82, people comment on her radiant smile. When I was young and pressed her, she would tell me tidbits about her childhood. She would giggle with embarrassment as she related that people used to tell her that she looked just like Shirley Temple, her favorite movie star.
     At age sixteen, she and her family were removed from their farm in the Yakima Valley of Washington and interned at a concentration camp in Wyoming during WWII because they were Japanese. She was reticent to discuss this part of her life, as were most Japanese Americans of her generation because it brought back too many painful memories. But I was always yearned to know more. I came to understand that she felt shame for being Japanese, although she had done no wrong.
     My motivation for writing this and other poems about the Japanese American experience is to understand my mother but also to tell the story of a passing generation of men and women, to serve as a reminder so that loss of liberty due solely to race will not happen again.



JODI  L. HOTTEL
is a writer and retired English teacher, living in Santa Rosa, CA. Her work has been published in the English Journal, The Dickens and anthologies from the University of Iowa Press, Tebot Bach, and the Healdsburg Arts Council. At age 16, her mother was interned at Heart Mountain, Wyoming.


 Copyright Wising Up Press 2009

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Universal Table   Finding the We in Them, the Us in You.   Wising Up Press
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Universal Table   Finding the We in Them, the Us in You.   Wising Up Press
www.universaltable.org      P.O. Box 2122, Decatur, GA 30031-2122      404-276-6046