Li-Young Lee’s “I” Poetry: In Quest for His Self as a Diaspora

Abstract

As one of the representative contemporary Asian American poets, Li-Young Lee in his two poetry collections entitled Rose and The City in Which I Love You, recuperates his fragmented family history of immigration, and reconstructs a dynamic relationship with remembrance of the past that writes about him and defines his sense of self. This paper from the multicultural perspective argues that understanding the past through understanding his godlike father, Lee not only negotiates the formation of his subjectivity and identity, but also establishes a spiritual origin and belonging not merely with his ethnic communities but with all the immigrants as well. The paper finds that the strategy he employs in his articulation of his self is marked by his excellent execution of poetic epiphany, and metonymic cannibalism.