Janice Mirikitani's "Suicide Note": Critical Analysis

"Suicide Note" by Janice Mirikitani, a Japanese feminist poet in the modern era revolves around themes of justice, gender, power and connects to the reader through the author’s ability to emote through her writing. The poem conveys the inner anguish of an Asian-American college student who commits suicide because she could not achieve perfect grades. On the cusp of womanhood, the speaker laments not being a boy and essentially apologizes for being born a girl, which suggests the antiquated notion that males are far more prized. It addresses grim contemporary realities that many young girls face in modern society and confronts cultural stereotypes, implicitly calling for change not only in public discourse within the Asian community but also in how people treat each other. As an Asian-America woman, Mirikitani articulates through her craft the anxieties, pressures, and obstacles she faced growing up in a culture that prizes men over women. She laments Asian-American women possess less agency than their male counterparts, which propels them to strive even harder to please and earn the love of their parents. The devaluation of women in certain cultures propels some to choose death because of the shame they feel. This poem ends in tragedy, and although the oppressive conditions the speaker feels is unchanged, the words of the poem gives the speaker a voice to articulate her feelings and ideas. The speaker of the poem feels trapped and silenced by the social and cultural conditions of the world she inhabits, which renders her powerless. As a result, she believes that only through suicide can she achieve the love of her parents and her own personal freedom. The speaker's vulnerability and alienation reflect Mirikitani's own traumatic experiences growing up female in a patriarchal society. Through careful diction and symbolism, Mirikitani’s “Suicide Note” explores ideas about justice, power, and freedom in relation to death or the act of suicide of a young girl who felt trapped growing up in a culture and society that circumscribed certain cultural and social limits. It reflects the struggles Mirikitani and other Asian-American women face with regards to female agency and empowerment in the modern day.

Mirikitani’s poem stresses the cultural convention within Asian-American communities that prizes men over women, which implicates that the speaker can no longer bear the extra pressure she feels to please her parents in a patriarchal society. The poem begins with the speaker wishing she had been born a boy because then her mother would love her and her father would have pride in her because she would be more capable of performing difficult labor (“Suicide” 12-15). As a woman, the speaker conveys the expectation for her to possess an ideal beauty which she repeatedly says she does not possess. Through the repetition of the phrases “not pretty enough” and “not good enough,” she not only suggests that she does not live up to the cultural expectations of being female but also that her womanhood itself prevents her from ever winning the approval of her father and mother. Through poignant and powerful symbolism, Mirikitani explores themes of justice, power, and freedom in relation to death in order to convey certain ideas about how gender and cultural norms structure the lives of adolescent Asian-American girls and foster feelings articulation by the speaker. The act of suicide itself seemingly gives the speaker the freedom she yearns for and allows her to escape a world where she feels “not good enough,” “not smart enough,” and “not pretty enough" (“Suicide” 3). Mirikitani employs the symbol of a sparrow to convey this sense of relief the speaker believes suicide will grant her. At the end the speaker says that when her body is found she hopes that her parents bury her “bird bones” under a “sturdy pine” (“Suicide” 56-59). Suicide thus frees her from the oppression she feels within a culture that devalues women, which creates justice for her. The notion that the ledge the speaker stands on is an altar elucidates that the act of committing suicide as an apology to her parents also empowers her (“Suicide” 42). She will leave this world marked by oppressive conditions and enter another one devoid of them. Shaped by her feminist leanings, Mirikitani’s poetry explores freely grim and painful realities while proffering optimistic messages to the reader. Adrian Oktenberg's "No More Madame Butterfly To Live and to Write: Selections by Japanese Women Writers, 1913-1938 by Yukiko Tanaka; Elizabeth Hanson; Hiroko Morita Malatesta; Shedding Silence: Poetry and Prose by Janice Mirikitani." (The Women's Review of Books 5.5 [1988]) contextualizes Mirikitani's work within the Japanese feminist tradition and explores the trauma her poetry evokes. Feminism provides a lens through which Mirikitani's poems must be read in order to fully grasp the issues she deals with and the messages she sought to convey, as Mirikitani herself witnessed and experienced the sexism evinced in her poetry.

However, the act of death also functions as a mechanism that silences her muted voice, which lends itself for the reader to examine if the speaker attains justice through the act of suicide. The language and repetition Mirikitani employs in her poem enable the reader to extrapolate meaning and resonate with the pain and anguish the adolescent female speaker articulates. In "Poem Analysis: Suicide Note by Janice Mirikitani" (Jotted Lines. N.p., Sept. 1 2010. <http://jottedlines.com/literature/poem-analysis-suicide-note-by-janice-mirikitani/>), the anonymous author argues for a particular interpretation of the poem, focusing on the diction and repetition of the pejorative terms the speaker uses to describe herself in her parents eyes in order to extrapolate meaning from the speaker's despairing words. This source places the suicide note within the tradition of apologetic writing, which imbues layers of meaning and prompts the reader to explore what the speaker truly is apologizing for. She “offers penance” before her final act alive for being born a girl and not living up to her parents’ high expectations. The speaker ends her poem by asking that her parents scatter her “feathers like/an unspoken song” as a rhetorical method of saying that she hopes her ideas and experiences disseminate far and wide (“Suicide” 60-61). However, suicide has silenced her muted voice, and her song would never be spoken. The act of suicide does not enact change but rather avoids it. Thus, Mirikitani’s poem merely expresses the feelings and thoughts of young girls growing up in an oppressive society rather than granting them agency to enact change.

To understand the themes and motifs present in poems, the background of the poet often elucidates how and what they write about and seek to convey. Guiyou Huang's Asian-American Poets: A Bio-bibliographical Critical Sourcebook (Greenwood Press, 2002) provides valuable information regarding the biography of Mirikitani and how her life experiences have shaped her poetry and inspired her to confront certain issues. Moreover, Huang discusses the major themes and motifs in Mirikitani's poetry and provides a review of her major works and literary achievements. Her haunting poetry reflects the protest literary tradition that characterized the 1960s (Huang 234). Mirikitani grew up during World War II when the U.S. government forced Japanese and Japanese-American citizens into internment camps, and although she does not recall the trauma it wrought the internment experience still permeates the majority of her poetry (233). In her adolescence and young adulthood, however, Mirikitani experienced sexual molestation which forever changed her life and greatly influenced her poetry:

From age eight to age sixteen, relatives and family friends molested her sexually almost daily (“Rebirth” 67). Though she remembers being molested in Chicago at age five, her strongest memories surround ages eight to sixteen. Her coerced silence and her mother’s complicit silence only intensified her sense of vulnerability and alienation. During these painful years, it was her grandmother’s unconditional love that kept her from suicide (233-234).

This trauma she faced not only as a result of being molested sexually but also because of her mother’s silence and inaction forms the bedrock of themes in “Suicide Note.” Mirikitani witnessed the efficacy and lack of power women felt in Asian-American cultures. This lack of agency rendered women vulnerable to feelings of anger, alienation, and depression. Unlike the speaker in her poem whose parents only express disappointment rather than unconditional love, Mirikitani did not commit suicide because she received love and tender care from her grandmother.

Janice Mirikitani’s “Suicide Note” conveys the anguish and pain felt by a young Asian-American female college student because she disappointed her parents by not receiving perfect grades. She feels like she can never meet their expectations. She writes her parents a suicide note that articulates her anguish rooted in her inability to live up to their personal as well as cultural expectations. Asian American cultures devalued women and prized men, which the speaker conveys through her desire to have been born a boy. Thus, the poem has apologetic undertones that she was born a girl who was not strong enough, pretty enough, and good enough to be loved and valued. Mirikitani explores ideas about justice and freedom as they relate to the act of suicide. Through suicide, the speaker, analogous to a sparrow, finds freedom from the torment she feels living within a patriarchal society. Suicide empowers the speaker by giving her agency in changing her condition by leaving an imperfect world for one devoid of the problems and unfair expectations she faces. Another interpretation renders the speaker's suicidal act as unjust because rather than acting as an agent of social change she merely articulates her troubles before leaving her unfair world unchanged. Such analyses not only reflects Mirikitani's biographical data but also is shaped by her feminist perceptions.

Works Cited

Huang, Guiyou. Asian American Poets: a Bio-Bibliographical critical sourcebook. 1. publ. ed. Westport, Conn. u.a.: Greenwood Press, 2002.

Kirszner, Laurie G., and Stephen R. Mandell. Portable Literature: Reading, Reacting, Writing. 7th ed., 2009 MLA Updated ed. Boston, MA: Wadsworth Cengage Learning, 2011.

Oktenberg, Adrian. "No More Madame Butterfly To Live and to Write: Selections by Japanese Women Writers, 1913-1938 by Yukiko Tanaka; Elizabeth Hanson; Hiroko Morita Malatesta; Shedding Silence: Poetry and Prose by Janice Mirikitani." The Women's Review of Books 5.5 (1988): 12-13.

"Poem Analysis: Suicide Note by Janice Mirikitani." Jotted Lines. N.p., 1 Sept. 2010. 2014. http://jottedlines.com/literature/poem-analysis-suicide-note-by-janice-mirikitani/.