Juliet Kono "Sashimi", Li-Young Lee poems

The first question that arose in my mind while reading "Sashimi" was who the "you" the speaker addressed was. I can tell it is someone who is skeptical about the speaker's culture and food ways because they think that eating sashimi is "primitive." This is the first thing the speaker says and after stating this she goes into describing the preparation of sashimi and eating of it. From the language and detail she uses you can tell that the speaker is trying to convey the message that eating sashimi is not primitive at all but a luxury and a delicacy instead. I thought that the "you" could either be a specific person or she could be addressing the majority; a group that is mostly ignorant towards Asian culture and food ways and views eating raw fish as primitive. By thinking that a culture's food is primitive you make the jump to assume that the entire culture is primitive and somehow lesser than your own culture without really knowing any details about that culture. So maybe the "you" in the poem is the American white majority which has a tendency to view cultures with different practices as primitive. When she says "soon you will come to appreciate the years behind my palate" I thought that she meant that soon the majority would come to appreciate sushi and see it as a delicacy and not a primitive food, something that the speaker's culture has known for a long time. She also says that she is patient for the day when this will happen, which leads me to believe that even though she is judged for her culture and her cultural practices she does not dwell on other's opinions because she loves sashimi and is proud of her Asian culture and knows that eventually the majority will understand and accept this.

Li-Young Lee's poems seemed kind of nostalgic to me because the speaker talked a lot about peaches and persimmons and his father and his childhood. The poems focus on the sweetness of the fruit and in "The Weight of Sweetness" the speaker is a child picking peaches with his father. The bags of peaches are heavy to the child and this is the "weight of sweetness" that gives the poem its title. I also think the "weight" refers to the hard labor of harvesting peaches as such a young child. The poem also mentions the "weight of memory" which gives the poem its nostalgic tone because this memory is a powerful one to the speaker and it is one he shared with his father, who I assume died. Because of this he cherishes the memories he has with his father, even though they bring him joy and sadness at the same time. It is kind of like the peaches because they are sweet, but harvesting them is difficult because of the weight of the bags and the labor that goes into picking them.