19 pages • 38 minutes read
Natalie DiazThey Don't Love You Like I Love You
Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 2019A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Themes
Native American genocide in America
The physical and cultural genocide of Native American peoples forms the skeleton of both the poem itself and the American history it speaks to. in the poet’s lexicon, reading American history without the context of this systematic oppression and brutalization is like reading a blank book: it is a cloudy, ghostly sheet meant to cover up the fact that “some many who live / because so many of mine / have not, and further, live on top of / those of ours who don’t” (Lines 9-12). The poem is informed by the absence of the many people of the poet’s kind who haven’t lived. Thus, the poet draws attention to the erasure of Native American peoples, whose population was decimated by at least two-thirds from the 16th century onwards. America is nothing if not a place where “we once were / in the millions” (Lines 17-18). The juxtaposition of “once” with “millions” shows the scale of the violence against Native Americans.
According to one census, the population of Native Americans in California dwindled by 90% during the 19th century, ostensibly due to disease. However, Native Americans were forced into conditions that enabled disease transmission and mortality, such as exposure to Afro-Eurasian diseases and life in the missions where they were made to live in cramped, unsanitary conditions. This erasure took place even as mainstream literature and culture sang of the rise of the American frontier and the American spirit of adventure and resilience. According to Diaz, this spirit is code for the massacre of Native Americans, the maps of America being clots of clouds which are actually clots of blood.
The process of colonization
In the middle of the poem, the poet explains what the word “maps” means in the context of America: “America is Maps—/ Maps are ghosts: white and / layered with people and places I see through” (Lines 18-20). These lines illustrate the process of settler colonization in action, where the colonizers sought to erase the indigenous population so they could create space for themselves. The settlers never wished to coexist with the Native American population but to either destroy them or make them assimilate in their white Eurocentric cultures. And most relevantly, they wanted the land on which Native American tribes lived.
One way they got this land was by redrawing the maps of America to expand their own territory and limit the space of the Native Americans, as Diaz pinpoints. That is why the poet refers to America as not just one map, but “maps,” highlighting the concentrically tightening boundaries of Native American territories. The maps of America are also described as “layered” (Line 19) because they paper over Native American rights layer by layer, encroaching in subtle and insidious ways. By using this particular vocabulary, Diaz highlights the way American courts and bureaucracy appropriated Native American lands through fraudulent paperwork and manipulation (for instance, tribal leaders, who did not have a written tradition, often signed off their lands without knowing the full terms of the arrangement).
The settlers often cast the Native Americans as inferior, a legacy that Diaz wrestles with and touches on throughout the poem. White mainstream culture was projected as ideal, which the poet describes as casting “the loud light / of their projectors/ of themselves …./ —sepia and blue—all over my body” (Lines 25-27). However, the poet’s mother can see through this ruse, the title of the poem itself being a call to her daughter to claim her own identity and sense of worth outside of the projections and legacy of her cultural trauma. This is encapsulated in the final line of the poem, “Natalie, that doesn’t mean / you aren’t good” (Lines 41-42), in which the speaker’s own goodness is sheltered and reflected back to her in a way that can only be done by someone who truly knows her and truly loves her.
Love and desire
The poem can also be read as an arena for competing kinds of love: the love the speaker seeks from white suitors, from white culture, and from America versus the mother’s love for the speaker and the speaker’s love for herself. These different loves are presented as paths the speaker may take, but the mother’s advice to the speaker not to “stray” (Line 5), turning the poem into a cautionary fairy tale. Like a fairy tale heroine, the speaker should not wander off into dangerous forests, except in the poem these forests are civilized, mainstream America. The speaker’s mother knows the temptation to stray is strong, more so for a Native American woman, whose culture is threatened by white patriarchy. The complex nature of love and desire is such that the oppressed may sometimes want the oppressor to secure their approval. Settler colonialism has prepared the ground well for such traps.
Yet, the speaker makes it clear that she can “see through” (Line 20) people and places; she can see that white colonialism wants her not just to be like white people but to want their validation. Thus, the speaker says her mother knew she would be tempted “to be held in something more/ than the loud light of their projectors” (Lines 24-25). This something more is white laps, white arms, and white approval. However, the speaker is clear that her mother has always known best and armed her with love for herself and her culture. She has prepared the speaker for “the yoke of myself,/ the beast of my country’s burdens” (Lines 34-35). The mother has weighted the speaker with the gravity of unconditional, wholesome love. Such a love doesn’t peddle lies, or set the speaker on a path which is seemingly easy. It seeks to arm her to grapple with historical realities. In the end, the mother’s love ensures the speaker knows that even if white people disapprove of her, she is good.
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By Natalie Diaz
