First off, I use the 10th edition of the English book so page # may be incorrect. I am responding to the poem Riding into California by Shirley Geok-lin Lim.
I can’t imagine what it would be like to be an immigrant in a new country but Lim paints a great picture of how it would be. She adds in some humor in the fact that Bruce Lee becomes her hero; he was probably the most popular chinese man in america at the time and many people of all races could enjoy the movies he acted in. At the end she points out how nice it is to sit alone all the way home on the train (space wise, those seats can get very crammy) but how lonely it is at the same time. I could relate to these last few lines and fully understand the way she felt then, the main reason I felt this was a great poem.
