Bird with a Broken Wing
Alykz H.
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In English class this fall, we read "The Gangster We Are All Looking For" by Lê Thi Diem Thúy. This book is about the experiences of Vietnamese refugees in America. For our final assignment, we each chose a literary device from the book and made a collage to represent it. I chose the metaphor "Ma says war is a bird with a broken wing flying over the countryside, trailing blood and burying the crops in sorrow."
This metaphor shows the main character’s mother coping with her fear of having a baby in the middle of a war. This scene takes place in Vietnam in the middle of the Vietnam war. It’s the night of the main character’s birth and her mother is worried that if her daughter is born during the war, she will breathe in the war around her and it will infect her soul. The broken wing symbolizes the destruction caused by war; the bird trailing blood represents the emotional impact of war, something that affects the main character’s mother deeply. And “burying the crops in sorrow” symbolizes the lasting impact of war on the economy and people’s health.
To make my collage, I tore up the pages of magazines and used the torn pieces of paper to put together an image of this metaphor. I started with the countryside, and then the sky, followed by the bird with a broken wing. I chose a swallow as the bird because of its distinct silhouette and the way the blood and tears contrast with its melancholy voice. After this, I added the blood trailing behind the swallow, and as a final touch, I covered the countryside in tears to represent the sorrow burying the crops.
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For me, creativity means expressing myself and my emotions and making what I feel visual and/or audible. It means letting my imagination run wild and showing the result of this to other people. For me, creativity means freedom and an exploration of something that's never been done before.
