Sharon Doubiago's South America Mi Hija: A Journey Into The Poet's Psyche.

At the first glance I thought that I am going to read portraits of South America.

Then, I found myself reading and traveling through the poet's psyche. South America Mi Hija is a lengthy piece that draws my attention to its details and redundancy . It is a rhetorical and instructional discourse that the poet begins as she starts her journey with her daughter cruising Columbia, Peru, and Ecuador. The poet seems to me to analogize the landscape of both America and the psychology and anatomy of women's body. In this sense, she raises questions about feminine position, gender issues, and social system that govern the relationships between male and female, daughter and mother, man and woman, man and nature, husband and wife. It is also the journey of reunification of mother and daughter, a chance that the poet employs to fully communicate with her teenage child in a didactic way. It is also a journey into myths and legends but with good adaptation and contextualization. Seemingly, most of these mythical names and figures are female-related names that signify different concerns of the poet's psyche.

Reading this chronicled pieces of poetry I dig into the poet's feelings, responsibilities, and new approaches to land and nature. This effort shows the poet's intention to identify with the natural world and its surroundings. I think the poet attempts to come in good terms with her relations to the past, daughter, and men. Noticeably, Doubiago does this impressionistic description with vivid, fresh, and striking language and style, with honesty and intimacy. All of what the poet depicts and mentions to her readers are about real and human situations that every one might be exposed to.

It is the subjective and personal tendency of the poet to publicize the facts of her life and make them her raw material in the volume we read . These events, facts, ups and downs, and experiences constitute the poet's chemistry, electricity, and anatomy. Clearly, this poem is assimilated chronologically with the poet's dreams, fantasy, history, and expectations. All of which are a mixture of the poet's personal and national - if not universal - concerns and interests . I can understand the poet's perplexity and astonishment about what she explores and encounters during the lengthy journey into another continent and landscape. Besides, it is noticeable that Doubiago's feminine identity is in continual flux from the beginning of the poem till the last word of it where "out the window" allows her to explore almost everything her eyes fall upon till she realizes that the " core relationship is not the masculine imbalance , Father and Son " (281) . Therefore, this journey is an exploration of Doubiago's identity, femininity, nature, psychology, and knowledge. This journey enables the poet to communicate with her beloved, intimate, and same - sex daughter and to achieve a kind of self - awareness and consciousness about their gender and identity. It is the mother - daughter conscious relationship that allows her to "love the male, to be a woman, knows the complicity, at the core of the self, with the patriarchy" (266). She does so without defeating submission to other gender / sex, knowing the limitations of both genders that they "don't change the world." I feel fragmented and confused when I continue reading some long pieces of this volume because of the continuations shifting of the poet's tone , rhythm , subject matters , detail , and unknown words and names she mentions in almost every line such as "su madre," "Mi hija," " cally llapi," "Antigua America, novia sumergida," and the like. Sometimes I cannot fellow what she tries to convey and this causes me a lot of troubles understanding the subtexts of her lengthy poem.

Nevertheless, one of the most attractive and striking features of Doubiago's

Poetry is her reliance on the mythical female figures such as Demeter, Persephone, Ishtar, and And Isis. Doubiago, I think, tries to identify her self and her daughter with such legendary goddesses. She wants to restore and refresh the happiness, pleasure, and confidence in one's self and between each other as female persons. I like the way Doubiago repeats some refrains lines, and words such as "out of the window," "beautiful," "darling," "Jesus," "inside," and many other words. This poetic device functions to emphasize the significances of her themes and purposes and creates links between the previous context and the following one maintaining coherence, cohesion, and unity in the whole poem.

Sometimes, I feel what Doubiago feels and expresses when she describes her "culture shock," because this is what happens to every one who travels to other places outside his own birthplace. She mentions her inability to understand people's language, customs, traditions, and life style, and this normal for anyone who travels.

The poet has given up "everything, our home, our things, my man," and the

daughter has given up " everything , your home, your things , high school , first boy, " ( 30 ) .

It is a sense of defeat and alienation inside and outside the selves of both