Li-Young Lee

1997 Words8 Pages
It is most difficult to differentiate the personal experiences of an author from their fictional stories. Every single moment in one’s life influences the next. This is most apparent when one creates a work of art. This is because art is a chemical bond created from experience and imagination. As with most writers and artist, Li-Young Lee’s own experiences helped him mold his creative expressions, like in his poem “My Father, in Heaven, Is Reading Out Loud.” His family fled Indonesia as Chinese political exiles. These experiences put an immense weight on Li-Young Lee’s father. His father was an extremely strict and stoic man, which placed tension on the relationship with his children, particularly Li-Young Lee. This strong father figure with a dark, heavy weight is seen in “My Father, In Heaven, Is Reading Out Loud.” Li-Young Lee grew up in a very religious household, with his father, a Christian preacher, pushing the Bible’s teachings.…show more content…
Li-Young Lee’s father was a little too forceful while drilling the Christian gospels to Li-Young Lee though. The pressure from the religious readings led Li-Young Lee to resist his father’s Christian beliefs. Throughout “My Father, In Heaven, Is Reading Out Loud” one sees references and hints to all of these experiences from Li-Young Lee’s conflict with his father. In addition, the poem alludes to many biblical prayers passages and uses them as wordplay to express Li-Young Lee’s continued resistance to his father’s religious teachings. Therefore, by analyzing the experiences Li-Young Lee and his father went through, and the biblical wordplay, one will see that these experiences directly influenced “My Father, In Heaven, Is Reading Out
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