Translucent Jade

In this highly personal poem, Ten describes the emotional experience of rediscovering a gift she received from her grandfather as a child. She reflects how at first, she was unbothered by the gift, and gave her attention instead to the gift her mother gave her at the same time, which ‘sparkled and sang.’ None of her family members pushed her to be more appreciative of her grandfather’s gift, and so it was soon forgotten. 

The second stanza depicts Ten’s rediscovery of the gift, and how she ‘retrieved his gift from the silence’ as an adult. The imagery she uses to describe the strangeness of the gift, ‘as if from a world I hadn’t inhabited,’ demonstrates the lack of connection she shares with her culture, while at the same time foreshadowing the role of the gift as a vehicle by which she may reconnect to that aforementioned culture. It was as a result of this disconnect that she now feels like ‘an imposter.’ It is by rediscovering the gift, the ‘translucent jade’ necklace for which the poem is named, that Ten is able to see the extent to which she has distanced herself from her culture. The necklace acts as a device that allows her to see her ancestral and cultural heritage clearly. 

Ten’s confrontation of that uncertainty is embodied in the recurring use of rhetorical questions in the final stanza of her poem. Her questioning of whether the necklace belongs to her, or she to it, is a powerful reflection on the nature of the relationship between culture and identity, and the way in which one informs the other.