This poem describes the speaker asking his mother to sing, which causes her and his grandmother to sing songs about places in China that the speaker has never been to but loves hearing about. It evokes a sense of homesickness and connection to heritage for the speaker. The last stanza draws a metaphor between the women crying as they sing and water lilies filling with water. The overall theme is about honoring one's cultural roots and family.

1. I ASK MY MOTHER TO
SING
- LI YOUNG LEE

2. Li Young Lee

3. Lee has said: "Writing poetry is
absolutely religious for me. I
happen to believe that
everything we do or say finally
is a dialogue with the
Universe, or God."

4. About Author
• Li-Young Lee is an American
poet. He was born on August
19,1957 in Jakarta, Indonesia, to
Chinese parents. His maternal
great-grandfather was Yuan
Shikai, China's first Republican
President, who attempted to
make himself emperor.

5. I Ask My Mother to Sing
Li-Young Lee
She begins, and my grandmother joins her.
Mother and daughter sing like young girls.
If my father were alive, he would play
his accordion and sway like a boat.
I’ve never been in Peking, or the Summer
Palace,
nor stood on the great Stone Boat to watch
the rain begin on Kuen Ming Lake, the
picnickers
running away on the grass.
But I love to hear it sung;
how the water lilies fill with rain until
they overturn, spilling water into water,
then rock back, and fill with more.
Both women have begin to cry.
But neither stops her song.
Water Lily (detail)
John La Farge

6. Kind of poem
• I Ask My Mother to Sing is a Sonnet with
three quatrians (stanza of four lines)
• It is a Lyric poem which describes the
emotions of the characters.
• In sonnets, the last two lines rhymes with
each other

7. Summary
• The first stanza is about what happens
when the speaker ask his mother to sing.
This is a stanza about homesickness and
all those people appearing here had the
chance to be and born there in China. It
shows two generations before speaker’s,
generations that know China as I said
before.

8. Accordian

9. • The second stanza is regarding
places that enable readers to
become aware that the speaker is
talking about China, since all
those places are China’s icons
but places the mask (persona)
has never been in those places
but he loves to hear about them

10. Peking (Beijing)

11. Summer Palace

12. Stone Boat

13. Kuen Ming Lake

14. • The third stanza says in its first line “But I
love to hear it sung”, it means that despite
speaker has never been in the land of the
Great Wall; he likes to hear it through
songs. He feels so special because the
speaker is not yearning something of his
past, nor places he has been in before, it’s
just a feeling about something he carries in
his blood, Chinese backgrounds. In
addition to that, this stanza is special
because it plays with readers, it makes us
hear and move with the waterlilies.

15. • The last stanza is the shortest and the
saddest. These two lines make us think
that both mother and grandmother
resemble water lilies. If we take the last
two lines of the third stanza and compare
them with the other two that made up the
fourth stanza we will find out the next:
“they overturn, spilling water into water” is
like say “both women have begun to cry”
dropping tears into tears.

16. Theme
Never forget where you're from
Stay connected to your roots and
feel proud on them. Love and
respect your loved ones.

17. Literary Devices
• Metaphor
• Simile
• Rhyme Scheme Free
• Imagery