Comparing poems from different cultures.

Comparing poems from different cultures.

Many poems deal with the theme of cultural identity. I have chosen

three to compare, they are:

Search For My Tongue, by Sujata Bhatt

Half-Caste, by John Agard and

Presents from my Aunts in Pakistan, by Moniza Alvi.

I chose these three poems because I feel that they all deal with

different aspects of cultural identity. For example Search for my

tongue covers the aspect of losing your native tongue and using a

‘foreign’ language, Half-Caste addresses the point of racism and

stereotyping, whilst Presents from my Aunts in Pakistan highlights the

issues of alienation and not being able to fit in with either side of

your family.

Search For My Tongue is quite unusual as instead of the text being in

one language all the way through it starts in English and then changes

into Arabic part of the way through. This leaves the reader with a

feeling of disorientation and that the reader, unless bilingual in

those two languages, can not read or make sense of the foreign

language.

This poem also relays to you the fact that even if you’ve forgotten

your mother tongue and don’t speak it for some time it will always

come back and blossom if it is used enough. The poet also puts the

point across by repeating the word tongue over and over again. The

foreign tongue can never take the place of the mother tongue, because

it is part of your own identity. The passage

‘….but over night while I dream it grows back..’

gives the impression that although you may speak in the foreign

language most of the time you still dream in your native tongue and it

will never go away.

The poem ‘Half Cast’ also deals with the aspects of a different

language but instead of writing in a ...

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...e to fit in with either side of their family. For example when her

Aunts bring the Candy-striped glass bangles they snapped and made her

wrists bleed, this is because people from Asia are very small boned,

so because of her being mixed race she was not able to put then. Also

it says that her school friends where not impressed by her Salwar

kameez, they wanted to see weekend clothes and where not interested in

the mirror work or the story how three of them sailed toto England.

I find all of these poems very interesting and thought provoking. My

favourite out of these three is half-caste because it give such a

strong point and all the examples make sense. Where we live there

aren’t many people from different cultures, so we don’t face racism

and people from mixed race that often. These poems make you see the

points of view and traditions of other cultures.