In Janice Mirikitani's "Suicide Note," identify the use of power creating justice.

This poem, which
reflects on theof certain cultures where women are so devalued that they choose to commit
suicide out of a sense of perceived shame, contains little sense of justice. We hear the voices
of girls on the cusp of womanhood who choose to kill themselves because they are not
boys:

If only I were a son, shoulders broad
as
the sunset threading through pine,
I would see the light in my mother's

eyes, or the golden pride reflected
in my father's dream
of my
wide, male hands worthy of work
and comfort.

What makes these girls feel like failures and consider themselves to be inadequate is
the high value that is placed on being male in such traditional and patriarchal cultures. To be
born a daughter in this poem is something to apologise for, as signified by the repeated refrain
of apologies that run through this poem.

The only power creating justice that
is evident in this poem is the act of creating the poem itself. The speaker, reflecting on all
the voices and "all the sorries" she hears, chooses to commemorate their loss in an
act of creation that clearly strikes a blow against such patriarchal societies and attempts to
bring justice to the girls who have chosen to end their lives:

Choices thin as shaved
ice. Notes shredded
drift like snow

on my broken body,
covers me like whispers
of sorries.

The poem ends with the speaker imagining her own suicide and her
remains being scattered over the earth, which is perhaps symbolic of how her ideas might spread
and result in change. There is little justice in this poem, however, and the power of artistic
creation is shown only as being able to give voice to the thoughts and feelings of these girls
rather than magically transform this terrible situation.