Abraham Chang's poem "Folding Won Tons In" emphasizes the struggle of performing a task on one's own without the guiding hand of a parental figure; in a sense, this poem portrays one's actions as self deprecating compared to another's actions. In this poem, the speaker views his actions as not good enough compared to his deceased mother. The reader can assume that the speaker’s mother is dead because of the way he describes how his mother “would” season the pork. The speaker degrades his self confidence when he describes the way he prepares the ingredients saying, “I’ve seasoned the pork like I imagine/my mother would-sesame oil, ginger,/peppers, scallions chopped/imperfectly.” (1-4). The poet places the word “imperfectly” on its own line
