Memory (CW: violence, rape, abuse) and "why some people be mad at me sometimes": Poem Analysis and Application

The Treachery of Memory

    There may be nothing so treacherous as memory. Ask people suffering from PTSD, forced to relive the trauma they've experienced in flashback and night terrors. Ask people for whom "Triggered" is a very real situation in which they lose control of their world for a terrifying set of time. Sensory flashbacks of being abused, of being raped, shot at during war pinned against a wall praying that it holds long enough to get away, shot at in their homes while sleeping and rolling out of bend to hid behind a mattress, of the very real pain and suffering they once lived through but their mind forces them to relive sometimes. The memories that may be so dangerous that they are repressed and hidden rather than dealt with and overcome. It's so hard for the brain to process those memories that it's "safer" for the brain to forget the horror than to acknowledge it. For many people, memory is a minefield. 

    In addition to the visceral reality people with PTSD suffer from, there's just the sometimes unreliability of our memory.Turns out, our brain is really bad at remembering stuff.  We remember the last time we remembered something, and not always the event itself. This has disastrous effect for the above mentioned people and trauma. Imagine that every time you recall the pain and suffering, it gets worse and worse, and your body is recalling worse and worse things.

    Imagine your brain tries to recall an event and it's actually much nicer than the reality was. What about the different experiences of the world? When you look at the summer of 1967, what do you recall? Is it the Summer of love? or the summer of the Race Riots? Memory is already not the most reliable thing we have when it's just our own, what about comparative experiences? Ever had a problem with an authority figure that your friends didn't think was as bad as you said? What about people who's abusive ex continue to have friends in the same circle? "I can't believe he would do that." or "I don't think she would say something like that!" This Nathan Pyle comic says it best. 

 

                     

Experience is memory. We rely on memory for decision making, but we often don't share experiences with people around us, as this comic demonstrates. The Eagle knows the mouse, is even on friendly and respectful terms with him, but doesn't have the same memory of the Owl. "He's never bothered me" is dismissive and cruel. The unreliability of memory is important in considering experience. "You're misremembering" can be a dangerous and cruel statement, especially when used by someone in a position of power that you are not in. 

"why some people be mad at me sometimes"

    Now, on to the poem. Lucille Clifton, for those of you who don't know, is an amazing American poet. She was Maryland's Poet Laureate from 1979 to 1985. Clifton "emphasizes endurance and strength through adversity, focusing particularly on African-American experience and family life."(poetryfoundation.org)  

                                     

    Here's a poem with an all lowercase everything, even the singluar prnoun I. Eschewing the rules of grammar there is no clear beginning to the sentence. It just starts. The title uses African American Vernacular English (AAVE), often referred to derogatorily as Ebonics. There's a whole lot we could get into about how ebonics was seen as inferior and all that, but know that it's a dialect and is just as valid as any other language. Using the AAVE connects Clifton with people in her own community, it's a type of signal for the audience. It is the only AAVE and dilaectical use in the poem. 

    We get five lines, each a part of one sentence, ending with a period. There's a finality to that period. Indicating a stop, even though there's no clear beginning. A clear ending. We see the word "remember" three times in lines 1, 2, and 4. In line 3 we get "their" and in line 5 we get "mine" holding a space seemingly reserved for these opposite memories, they have theirs on line three and the speaker has hers on line 5. Since they is never codified, we can assume it's someone who lives in some way different from the speaker. The title is in AAVE, a dialect often reserved to be used around other black people, we can start to think that the speaker is speaking to other black people about why "some people" are mad at her. "they" and "some people" are the same. IS this explicitly about race? No, but it's one way to read it. It could also be read as being among people who agree with you and talking about people who disagree with you. It could also be about being around people you feel safe with and talking about people you feel unsafe with. It could be a group of people talking about their significant others. Right now, in 2020, during the summer of the BLM movement, I can see this being about race. 

    

    This title is explaining something. "This is why people get mad sometimes." More on this later, becasue since we haven't read the poem, we don't know why yet. 

they ask me to remember

   It's innocent enough: asking someone to remember something. "Remember that time we hung out in the french class after the teacher left and found her cigarettes?" "Remember when we first met?" These are the same requests, this one is immediately followed by "but"

but they want me to remember 

their memories

But always means a shift or change. Normally the shift in a poem takes time to build to, but Clifton introduces it immediately. so before it was an "ask" now it's a "want." I'm asking you to..." versus "I want you to..." carry very different tones and authority. So here, we see that the ask is more of a desire on the part of "they" than something for the speaker of the poem. This can become sinister fast, which is the major mood of this poem. Something is sinister about the whole poem. Notice that it only takes one line to go from "Remember when..." to "You're remembering it wrong." 

The term "Gaslight" means to psychologically manipulate someone into believing something that is contrary to their own memory. It is used in a myriad of ways, but most often nefariously. It can be an unconscious method of covering for oneself or intentionally abusive towards the victim. This poem is clearly about gaslighting someone. If you ask someone to remember but then say, "No, that's not what happened," that's gaslighting. It's a favorite of narcissists, especially. Like President Trump. 

Too many times. 

and i keep on remembering

mine.

I love this powerful ending. Even at the hands of someone who is telling them to believe something other than their own reality, they stand firm. "I keep on remembering" is a Present Progressive Tense verb phrase. Present Progressive means the action is happening right now and will continue to happen. That's a lot of hope for the future; "and i keep on remembering" is equally powerful. To keep on, despite the wants of the other person, is a powerful statement. This ending of the poem finalizes it all with a single powerful word and a period, putting an end to the whole thing.

 "mine." 

That's ownership that can't be taken away. No mater how many times they want the speaker to remember something different, she will remember her own memories and not give in to what "they" want her to believe. 

"why people be mad at me sometimes"

Now we know why they get mad; the speaker is standing up for themselves. "they" are trying to convince her that their memories are reality, but the speaker knows that's not true. The speaker knows there's a chasm of experience between the two of them. Notice they don't deny the other person's memory, like the "they" are trying to do. They simply recall their own experiences rather than giving in to the other's. Not only that, it makes them mad. To use my favorite retort, "Die mad about it." IF you're gonna get mad because I have different experiences than you, than you can hold on to those mad feelings without me caring. Notice it doesn't make the speaker mad, at all. She just does what she's gonna do. 

Closing

    What better example of the application of this poem do we have than with the Black Lives Matter Movement coming to a head in our streets right now? There are countless voices clamoring for "Making America Great Again," as if to say "Remember when America was great? Don't you remember?" and the nation is rising up with "Maybe that's what you remember, but we remember something different." Think of the monuments to slave owners and people who fought for the right to own a human, and people say "If you don't remember history you'll repeat it" like people don't relive the national trauma every time they walk through the doors of Robert E Lee Middle school. What do you want people to remember looking at the statue? That the person remembered fought to keep others enslaved? We'll remember the important stuff. 

We remember Ferguson. 

We remember Tulsa.

We remember Tough on Crime. 

We remember Broken Window policies. 

We remember inequality baked into the very laws of the country from the very beginning. 

So don't try and make us remember it your way. 

Cause we will keep on remembering 

ours.