Comparing Poems 'Being True To Myself By Diana Reyers' Poem

Diana Reyers once said , “Being true to yourself is about mustering up the courage to have difficult conversations, knowing that you may not meet the other person's expectations of who they think you should be”. Reyers implies that it is difficult to live up to a social expectation of who others want you to be. One needs to have those moments where you challenge others perception of you. After reading girl and speak up, both poems share the commonality of the structure used in the poem, but they differ in how the structure highlights the theme that you have to be or act a certain way to live up to society

In the poems girl and speak up the authors share a commonality in using the same structure for their poems. For instance in the poem girl,

it states, “this is how you set a table for breakfast this is how you behave in the presence of men who don't know you very well and this way they won't recognize immediately the slut that I warned you against becoming be sure to wash every day even if it is with your own spit don't squat down to play marbles you are not a boy” this demonstrates how the author uses the structure of a dialogue and her poem additionally in the poem speak up it states “your Korean are you yes why don't you speak Korean. Just don't I guess. say something Korean” this highlights the structure of a dialogue used in this poem as well. in both poems, the structure of a dialogue is used to enhance the theme

In the poems "girl" and "speak up", although the authors share the same structure they highlighted the theme in different ways. for instance “is it true that you sing benna in Sunday school....but I don't sing benna on Sundays and not at all at Sunday School” this shows that in girl the author uses the structure of a dialogue, and although it is a one-sided conversation the theme is still highlighted because the mother is telling her daughter all the right things to do as a girl just to live up to a social expectation. Additionally speak up says “listen to me? say some foreign words. But I'm American can't you see. your family comes from somewhere else... But I was born here. so am I”. This shows how the conversation becomes uncomfortable and focuses on how the speaker looks different and is told that because they look different they are not American enough.