I Was My Own Route
Julia de Burgos
A precursor to the contemporary Latina/o writers, de Burgos,
in her poem “I was my Own Route,” depicts how the women
are burdened with the patriarchal ideologies from the past.
Therefore, de Burgos urges the women to detach themselves from the past so as to
locate their identity within.
Understanding the text
Answer the following questions.
a.
Why did the speaker try to be the way men wanted her to be?
The speaker tried to be the way men wanted her to be because she was a woman from a patriarchal society. She has no option to follow the route she was given.
b.
What do you understand by her feet ‘would not accept walking backwards’?
Now she has known her route. She doesn't want to follow the past learned things from the patriarchal society. She is made up of now. She no longer holds a desire to walk on the old path but she is now walking on the new path.
c.
Who are the old guards? Why did they grow desperate?
The old guards are the old conventions and men in the society. They grew desperate because they had been waiting for long to set free themselves. They were constantly flapping to fly and feel freedom. They were encroached and bound with the old backward.
d.
How did the speaker have ‘a feeling of intimate liberation’?
The speaker had a feeling of intimate liberation because the branch which was pinned, has been unpinned forever, and at each new whiplash, she could see familiar horizons but at the distance.
Her face took the expansion that came from within, the defined expression that hinted at a feeling
of intimate liberation;
e.
Why did the speaker’s desire to follow men warp in her?
The speaker's desire to follow men wrapped in her because the homage was left waiting for her.
Reference to the context
a.
What does the speaker mean when she says she was playing a game of hide and
seek with her being’?
She means she was holding her wishes and desires. She has wrapped it in front of the patriarchal society.
b.
Why, in your view, was her back ripped by the old guards as she was advancing
forward?
The old guards are the norms and traditions of patriarchal society. These norms have encroached on women and their life. The speaker has understood and she has outgrown old learnings.
c.
What, according to the speaker, did it feel like to be free?
According to the speaker, she felt herself a blossom of all the soils of the earth,
of the soils without history, a future, edges, all the men, and all the epochs.
d.
Why does the speaker prefer the present to the past?
The speaker prefers the present to the past because her wings were not free in the past. And the pin in her wings is unpinned. She feels total liberation in the present than in the past.
e.
John Donne, in his poem “No Man is an Island”, says, “No man is an island
entire of itself.” Would Burgos agree with Donne? Do you agree with Donne or
Burgos?
According to John Donne, a person requires the company and support of others and society as a whole in order to thrive. A man can't survive alone entirely to himself. The phrase 'no man is an island' expresses the idea that human beings do badly when isolated from others and need to be part of a community in order to thrive. No Burgos wouldn't agree with Donne because she is talking about the feeling of a female who wants to set away from any association that clips her wings.
Reference beyond the text
a.
Write an essay on My Idea of Freedom.
b.
Not all people, however, seem to agree with the kind of freedom upheld by
Burgos in this poem. For example, William Faulkner, in his novel Requiem for
a Nun, says, ‘“The past is never dead. It’s not even past. All of us labor in webs
spun long before we were born, webs of heredity and environment, of desire and
consequence, of history and eternity.” Do you agree with Faulkner? Why? Why
not?
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