Natalie Diaz’s “They Don’t Love You Like I Love You” is a poem that explores a mother’s love for her daughter and underscores the importance of such relationships. A daughter narrates her mother’s love and its difference in the relationship between the white and Indian communities. Thus, the poet shows that relationships can be developed through love, hate, or lies, but the relationships that matter are those based on genuine love. The speaker expresses how her mother showed love towards her by needing her to understand that she does not need validation from her “enemies” or colonizers because she is good enough. In this context, the author explores the mother-daughter relationship, the colonizer, the colonized relationships, and the relationships between superior and inferior. She explores the plight of Native Americans in the hands of white people and emphasizes that the relationships that matter are those based on genuine love. This essay will expound on Diaz’s emphasis on the importance of focusing on relationships that are built on love and empathy rather than those built due to superiority and inferiority.
The poet insinuates that relationships, like the one she has with her daughter, are important because they are characterized by empathy. The title, “They Don’t Love You Like I Love You,” and a phrase that the speaker utters in the 39th line of the poem portrays a feeling of endearment and genuine love. The poet used the words in the title in the body of the poem for emphasis (Bartlett). Furthermore, the emphasis is evident due to how the author used the words just before the end of the poem. She did so to remind the reader of her main point just in case they forgot along the way. Thus, the mother understands that the white-dominated society cannot show her daughter the love that she shows her. Even if white people may pretend to love their daughter, the history of stereotyping and discrimination against Native Americans shows that they cannot genuinely love her (Parmar). The mother understands that the white community can never accept her daughter as one of them. She talks about Native Americans’ history of suffering in white people’s hands, and it is only her mother’s love that keeps her going. The speaker mentions the inhuman deeds the white people did to Native Americans when she refers to the United States as “ghosts,” meaning they haunt Native Americans. She says that the US is “a clot of clouds, spilled milk or blood” (Diaz 15-16). The symbolism is used to refer to the white-dominated society where the blood of Native Americans was shed. In this sense, the relationship between the white community and Native Americans is unideal or unfruitful because it lacks genuine love and empathy.
Diaz uses the speaker to emphasize the importance of relationships that are built on love and emphasize that these relationships matter the most. As the poem begins, the speaker states that her mother told her that she loves her more than they love her long before “Beyonce lifted the lyrics from the Yeah Yeah Yeahs” (Diaz 2-3). The statement means that the speaker’s mother told her how much she loved her before Beyonce released her song with the refrain “They Don’t Love You Like I Love You.” The words show that the speaker values the relationship she had with her mother because she did not need to seek validation from her to earn love. Her mother loved her more than anyone else, even before the phrase used as the poem’s title became famous. She did not want her daughter to “stray,” which is used in the poem to mean seeking validation from the white community because her love is enough. It also means that her mother appreciates her in ways that white people cannot.
The poet shows that some relationships can only exist if one person accepts their position as an inferior and lets the superior one enjoy the position and dictate. The author uses the word “begging” to show the longing for validation that white supremacy makes the minority groups feel (Diaz 22). As she explains her pursuit of seeking validation from white people, the speaker says that her mother understood how it feels to “need someone to love you, someone not your kind” (Diaz 7-8). The words show that the daughter now knows that her mother knew she was desperate for approval from white people. Therefore, her mother wanted her daughter to understand that she was good enough and that she could not change the preexisting relationship between “her kind’ (Native Americans) and the “other kind” (White people). In this context, the speaker expresses a feeling of desire and resilience, which means that these relationships do not matter and do not need to exist (Bartlett). She desires to be like the white people who are not discriminated against and who enjoy many privileges due to their race. However, her words portray an inferiority complex, especially when she says that her mother knew that her daughter would beg white people to place her head on their white laps (Diaz 22-24). Diaz understands desire as a search for what is possible, but this desire has limitations when it comes to wanting to become something that you are not (Parmar). As the poem ends, the speaker says that she now understands that her mother meant that she should be ready to carry the weight in her heart and live with the hurt because she is good enough. Therefore, the poem’s ending suggests that relationships, where one party considers itself supreme are not worth keeping.
In conclusion, Diaz uses the poem to highlight the importance of genuine love, empathy, and equality in relationships and emphasize that only such relationships matter. She highlights the pursuit for validation of Native Americans who feel like the dominant race should accept them as part of the white community. Diaz herself is a Native American, hence comprehensively understands what it feels like to be a Native American in a white-dominated society. The speaker mentions the struggles and her mother’s love and assurance keep her going. Generally, the poet praises relationships that are characterized by love and empathy and urges readers to focus on them rather than chasing relationships where they are devalued.
References
Bartlett, Joshua. “Postcolonial Love Poem by Natalie Diaz.” The Ploughshares Blog, 28 Feb. 2020, blog.pshares.org/postcolonial-love-poem-by-natalie-diaz/.
Diaz, Natalie. “They don’t love you like I love you.” Poets.org, poets.org/poem/they-dont-love-you-i-love-you.
Parmar, Sandeep. “Natalie Diaz: ‘It is an Important and Dangerous Time for Language’.” The Guardian, 2 July 2020, www.theguardian.com/books/2020/jul/02/natalie-diaz-postcolonial-love-poem-shortlisted-forward-prize-collection-interview.
write