White Lies
The “White Lies” is a poem written by Natasha Trethewey, a bi-racial African American. The poem is about an African American girl who is experiencing an identity crisis due to her mixed race. Trethewey has used a selective choice of words in her poetry to convey the tone of the poem and pass her message to the audience. Color imagery has been used from the first stanza to the last stanza to depict an intensity or the weight of the poem to the persona. The incorporation of Trethewey’s choice of words and extensive use of color imagery conveys the persona’s attitudes towards her racial identity crisis. This essay will discuss the various writing techniques used by the author to describe the attitudes of the speaker in the poem.
In the first stanza, Trethewey mentions six different colors that describe the lies she has been giving to people about herself. The speaker states that the lies she was telling when growing up were “light-bright, near-white, red-boned,” which she says were just ‘white lies’ (Trethewey, 25). She uses white to mean that the lies she was telling were innocent because white is a color of purity. Being a mixed-race girl, the color of her skin was extremely light, as described in the first stanza, that she almost looked like a white girl. Since her skin could comfortably lie about her racial identity, she decides to pretend that she is white. The pretense is intended to make her fit in the society where she thinks being white is better than being black—considering that Trethewey was born in the 1960s when the African Americans were still looked down upon.
The persona uses lies to describe the place she lives and the clothes she wears. However, Trethewey makes the reader understand the girl’s truth through the choice of words she uses. Although the girl looks white, the reader can see that she lives in a black community. The author writes that she lives “in a black place” (Trethewey, 25). In this case, the words used to give the image of poverty, a lifestyle that is not normal in society. This is one of the reasons why she had to lie about her home because the whites did not live in such neighborhoods. Since she pretended to be white, she had to lie that she lived in an upper-class community so that she can fit in her white status. The girl also lies about her homemade clothes by pretending that they are costly and came from “Maison Blanche” or the white house (Trethewey, 25). This does not mean they come from the house of the president; rather, they are manufactured by ‘white men.’ This shows that the speaker is ashamed of her black heritage, and because her skin looks white, she can easily hide racial identity.
Trethewey also uses the “ivory soap” to show cleansing because ivory is a symbol of purity (Trethewey, 25). The speaker’s mother used the soap to wash her mouth so that she can stop lying about herself. The author also uses imagery to show us that the girl is immature because she swallows the soap so that she can be made white from inside out. This works to show the reader how the speaker craves acceptance from society, which she believes can be achieved by ‘being white.’
In conclusion, Trethewey makes the reader think that the speaker did not wish to have such a mixed heritage. Instead of embracing her black and white heritage, she only chooses one side of her identity. She tells so many lies as she grew up, which are most likely the things she wished she had or the person she wanted to be. The girl takes the white race to be superior to the black race, so she does not want to accept the black part of her identity. For this reason, she keeps pretending about her racial identity through lies so that she can fit in ‘white’ society.
Work Cited
Trethewey, Natasha. “White Lies.”