Becoming a Woman by Hillary Tham

   

Hilary Tham's "Becoming A Woman" highlights the receiving of maternal wisdom that only women who are going through it. This poem presents various portraits of the transition from childhood to adulthood when a girl reached her puberty. The poet perhaps is telling the story within her own experiences on becoming a woman. This we can read in this stanza,   

“You will bleed
at a special time of the moon.”
she told me. “Use these
to preserve modesty and the secret
of your femalesness.”

The poet's mother is teaching her to use the traditional white paper while having her menstrual but the poet did not follow her way.  She hates menstrual which all girls could not escape. She finally accepted the fact of having  menses after she became a mother. 

"I have forgiven the moon since our children came, 
spores of the sunrise in their newborn hands" . 

As for me, I think this poem is not suitable for teaching literature for secondary school students. We are living in the eastern country whereby we still uphold our older generations traditions and cultures. It is a mother's responsibility  to carry out their jobs to tell her child especially girl on becoming a woman. Discussing this poem in a classroom may lead to embarrassment. Of course, we are advancing and heading towards modernization but that doesn't mean we should reveal private matters publicly.