How I Got That Name Themes

"How I Got That Name" is a poem about identity. Who am I? Where do I come from? Where do I belong? Whose pants are these? Oh wait—scratch that last one. The rest are the types of questions that C...

It ain't easy being a foreigner. We have to adapt to new places, learn new languages, and eat new food. One of the main themes of Chin's "How I Got That Name" is this experience of arriving in a ne...

Say what? The language we speak defines who we are. It defines our cultural references and how we understand ourselves. Chin's "How I Got That Name" deals with how the transition from one language...

"How I Got That Name" points to the complexity of race in America. On the one hand, there's the black-white racial divide, which goes all the way back to slavery. On the other hand, the arrival of...

"How I Got That Name" deals with the influence of family on identity. After all, no matter how "assimilated" we are, no matter how far away we move from our family, we're still ultimately our child...