Barnyard grass

"If I were to give you a book, I wouldn't send you poetry.

I'd send you one about plants, about crops.

To tell you the difference between rice and barnyard grass.

To tell you about the spring when a stalk of barnyard grass

lives in constant fear."

— Yu Xiuhua

Today I read a poem by a Chinese female poet named Yu Xiuhua, who has cerebral palsy.

Though she was originally a peasant woman, she strives to write.

From a literary perspective, this poem is profoundly impactful. It reveals the survival struggles and self-resistance of marginalized groups within social structures, carrying both individual existential anguish and reflecting universal human struggles:

She's saying she is that barnyard grass - the weed in rice fields that farmers eradicate.

In everyone's eyes, they all want to eliminate her. Everyone sees her as superfluous, that weed that isn't true crop.

Yet she declares: "I will tell you the difference between them.

I will tell you about my spring filled with trepidation as a barnyard grass.

I too have moments of joy.

But whenever joy arrives, it's always accompanied by fear."