The Animal Personification of Self Sacrifice

Being an Immigrant Daughter

There are two poems titled “The Puppy” in Sarah Gambito’s Delivered. Both poems showcase in excellent imagery what one does to get approval, whether from American students in the first “The Puppy” on page 10 or from wanting approval from her mother with the second “The Puppy” on page 15. There is not a word that I found for the animal personification of a feeling but Gambito does this well with her use of the puppy. Though puppies are innocent, the use of their image in Gambito’s work is to portray a pathetic nature of wanting affection and doing anything to get it. 

In the first “The Puppy,” it begins like a fable with the first line conveying a bedtime story tone: “Immigrant families began to arrive and children were born.” English is introduced and compared to a puppy: “cool and light like a puppy but more useful.” The next few lines are examples of how strong English was used as social leverage. For example, if there were multiple Filipino students at one school, the Americanized Filipino students were “cooler” and thus more accepted by their white American contemporaries from the sheer fact that their English is unaccented: “They picked it up and threw it at each other at playgrounds. Some were better than others.” 

There is a brief description of a puppy’s physicality: “Some compared back legs and the length of fur and the set of the nose and wide dripping eyes.” This line is definitive in showing the reader that the puppy is not English itself, but rather the immigrant and or children of immigrant parents students. In the same way that despite all puppies’ inherent cuteness, there are puppies that we deem cuter than others. Not only is the speaker of this poem shirking Tagalog in favor of better English but now in public criticism of their Filipino features, which is an all too familiar scene at any recess. This is evidenced by the the mention of the puppy’s nose and eyes, features that are under constant scrutiny in traditional Filipino families. The desire for Amero/Eurocentric language and physical features is so strong, there are even supposed “remedies” for these features, such as pinching one’s nose everyday to make it small and pointy and or opening one’s eyes as wide as they can to an oncoming wind to make one’s eyes bigger.

Gambito then displays the nuanced, very elementary experience of feigning apathy. Toward the end of the piece, the fable goes: “Some just thought it was cute but a waste of time,” but ends “Even if they didn’t say so everyone competed.” Immediately the immigrant and or child of immigrant reader’s mind goes to a public defiant comment in defense of their accent, only to go home and practice English in the bathroom. Or, to plead with their parents to stop speaking Tagalog with them at home. This fable warns the reader of what is lost with the pursuance of English fluency. 

The final “The Puppy” is not told in a fable style. Layered in this prose piece is the enmeshment formed between mother and daughter, as well as the expectations that Filipino mothers have of their daughters. Often in trauma, specifically Complex Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, or C-PTSD, one’s memories become fragmented or unaccessible. As this couple holds their child, they ask the speaker of the poem if they remember their childhood, to which they respond: “I couldn’t remember.” Despite not knowing the specificity of their memories, there was a wanting, like a puppy, to act in a way that was approving. 

The speaker’s mother enters the piece after this line, giving food. In Filipino culture, it’s a way of showing love to bring food. Unfortunately, in wanting to stay within Amero/Eurocentric beauty standards, there is also a push for thinness, which creates contradictory feelings for the speaker. On one hand, they’re “proud” of being someone their mother considers bringing food for, and on the other, they’re ashamed of the future act of eating all of these pastries. There is a pain and heaviness with the line, “I said this can’t happen again. What if I get pregnant”, and contradictory feelings persist. The speaker wants to stop this harmful exchange between their parent, but is also thinking of how to maintain boundaries if they’re interested in expanding their family. The following lines confirm this as the speaker stands in their decision to not speak until a big life event happens, which is the reality for plenty of immigrant children and or children of immigrant parents. The last line is not of the baby in the beginning of the piece, but of the speaker as a child. With healing comes mourning, and the speaker mourns for the daughter they were but cannot remember. 

In both versions of “The Puppy”, there is a warning of the loss that comes with seeking external sources. For the readers with shared experiences, it is far too late to be a warning. Rather, Gambito calls for self-reflection. Yes, this is what was done to survive. But what’s next? As adults, how can one make space instead of continuing the competition for who’s “most American”, or whose English is “best”? How can we heal so that our children have memories of their childhoods? In that sense, it is still a warning but also a call to action. In adulthood, Gambito asks, how can we make it better, gentler for the next generation.