If Momma Aint Happy

 Lois-Ann Yamanaka captures the complexity of a family in section Two of Saturday Night at the Pahala Theatre, specifically in “Parts”. This series of short poems, named for different body parts, capture both the humor as well as the raw and perhaps disturbing aspects of this family.

            In THE NOSTRIL we encounter the more humorous side, in a scolding of a child caught picking their nose as we read:

                        What I told you

                        about digging your nose?

                        who taught you that?

In part the humor lies in the universality of this problem – anyone who has spent time with kids knows that their fingers seem to have a magnetic attraction to their nostrils. But as we read on we see the disciplinary aspect to this “digging” as our narrator states:

                        You going get

                        two slaps

                        I ever see you

                        doing that

                        in public again.

The dynamic is only enhanced in this poem by Yamanaka’s use of pidgin – which lends itself to oral recitation – and we can easily imagine this scolding recited lively and full of frustration at the booger-picking child. From THE NOSTRIL alone we can tell that in this family “if momma ain’t happy, ain’t nobody happy”, or to put more succinctly – what the mother says, goes. End of story.

Sarah Eastland