The poem “I Lost My Talk” by Rita Joe was written by a Mi'kmaq woman who was forced into a residential school by the name of Shubenacadie Indian Residential School as a young girl. While she was there she was changed and it lead to her having an inspiration to write poems and stories. Residential schools are known for the damage that the attendees suffered such as physical and mental abuse some schools also sexually assaulted their students. Due to Rita Joe’s work with poetry and writing she was given a membership position in the Queen’s Privy Council for Canada. Some of the other honours she received were a few honorary doctorates . This poem is about what was lost and taken from her. She uses this to express her feelings. She releases her …show more content…
thoughts with this poem and asks for help to heal. In the poem Rita Joe uses the word talk as means of expressing oneself to peers.
At the residential school she was forced to learn English as opposed to her native language, which would have been Mi’Kamaw. She lost her potential she could have had in that culture. She was brainwashed and corrupted simply put. “You snatched it away: I speak like you, I think like you, I create like you. ” She feels as if her culture was stolen from her and it was. Her use of talk is opposite of the dictionary definition of it but in this context it shows the damage done to her. We use talk to express ourselves in our native tongues whether it is Russian, Ukrainian, Arabic, or whatever we have phrases and words we use about ourselves. Later in the poem Mrs.Joe wrote “Let me find my talk so I can teach you about me. ” She needs to find herself again. She was taught about white people and white culture now she has to find her culture and her identity. She needs to do that and is asking for help to do from whomever is willing to help her do so. She is reaching out whether its to something such as a go or a physical being like a cultural leader that much isn’t clear but she is reaching out to someone or something for the help she needs to find
herself. Rita Joe uses her poem to explain how she feels. She was taken away from what she knew and forced to learn a new language. Her way of thinking and just being a person was completely changed when she was forced into a residential school. Her poem talks about how she felt lost by what she lost. She feels as if her identity and potential were stolen. She shows the emotional scars suffered. She got her point across very clearly to the audience.
In this poem, there is a young woman and her loving mother discussing their heritage through their matrilineal side. The poem itself begins with what she will inherit from each family member starting with her mother. After discussing what she will inherit from each of her family members, the final lines of the poem reflect back to her mother in which she gave her advice on constantly moving and never having a home to call hers. For example, the woman describes how her father will give her “his brown eyes” (Line 7) and how her mother advised her to eat raw deer (Line 40). Perhaps the reader is suggesting that she is the only survivor of a tragedy and it is her heritage that keeps her going to keep safe. In the first two lines of the poem, she explains how the young woman will be taking the lines of her mother’s (Lines 1-2). This demonstrates further that she is physically worried about her features and emotionally worried about taking on the lineage of her heritage. Later, she remembered the years of when her mother baked the most wonderful food and did not want to forget the “smell of baking bread [that warmed] fined hairs in my nostrils” (Lines 3-4). Perhaps the young woman implies that she is restrained through her heritage to effectively move forward and become who she would like to be. When reading this poem, Native American heritage is an apparent theme through the lifestyle examples, the fact lineage is passed through woman, and problems Native Americans had faced while trying to be conquested by Americans. Overall, this poem portrays a confined, young woman trying to overcome her current obstacles in life by accepting her heritage and pursuing through her
The rhetor for this text is Luther Standing Bear. He was born in 1868 on the Pine Ridge Reservation. He was raised as a Native American until the age on eleven when he was taken to Carlisle Indian Industrial School: an Indian boarding school. After graduating from the boarding school, he returned to his reservation and now realized the terrible conditions under which they were living. Standing Bear was then elected as chief of his tribe and it became his responsibility to induce change (Luther Standing Bear). The boarding schools, like the one he went to, were not a fair place to be. The Native American children were forced to go there and they were not taught how to live as a European American; they were taught low level jobs like how to mop and take out trash. Also, these school were very brutal with punishment and how the kids were treated. In the passage he states, “More than one tragedy has resulted when a young boy or girl has returned home again almost an utter stranger. I have seen these happenings with my own eyes and I know they can cause naught but suffering.” (Standing Bear 276). Standing Bear is fighting for the Indians to be taught by Indians. He does not want their young to lose the culture taught to them from the elders. Standing Bear also states, “The old people do not speak English and never will be English-speaking.” (Standing Bear 276). He is reinforcing the point that he believes that they
Everyone has once been someone that they aren’t necessarily ashamed of, but something they aren’t anymore. When you’re in school, everyone is different; between the popular kids, the jocks, the cheerleader, the dorks, the Goths, and all the other “types” of people. In “Her Kind,” Anne Sexton shows that she has been a lot of different women, and she is not them now. In this paper we will be diving into the meanings behind the displaced “I,” the tone and reparation, and who Anne Sexton really is and how that affects what she is trying to let people see through this poem.
She is commenting on how Native Americans lived before they were moved. They had a good life, as she writes, will a great sense of community, friendship and prosperity. No one in the tribe was left behind, no matter if they were not good hunters or gatherers. As long as you had a tribe to look after you, you will be alright. However, each stanza this pleasantness is interrupted by the white man. Even though what the Native Americans stand for is beautiful, they are removed and they are only allotted what the imperialists will give them. Here is a stanza to understand these concepts, “To each head of household—so long as you remember your tribal words for/ village you will recollect that the grasses still grow and the rivers still flow. So/ long as you teach your children these words they will remember as well. This /we cannot allow. One hundred and sixty acres allotted” (Da’). As we see with this quote, Da’ is pointing out how the new Americans exiled the Native people not only from their land, but their righteous ways of living, and the precious land that allowed them to be
As she listens to the speaker she started to think about the opinions of others regarding her. She thought to herself, ´´It was awful to be a Negro and have no control over my life¨. It was in that moment she realized that others do not see her as she sees herself. To them she's just a another black person in the world, but she does not see herself as that.
Chang-Rae Lee’s Native Speaker expresses prominent themes of language and racial identity. Chang-Rae Lee focuses on the struggles that Asian Americans have to face and endure in American society. He illustrates and shows readers throughout the novel of what it really means to be native of America; that true nativity of a person does not simply entail the fact that they are from a certain place, but rather, the fluency of a language verifies one’s defense of where they are native. What is meant by possessing nativity of America would be one’s citizenship and legality of the country. Native Speaker suggests that if one looks different or has the slightest indication that one should have an accent, they will be viewed not as a native of America, but instead as an alien, outsider, and the like. Therefore, Asian Americans and other immigrants feel the need to mask their true identity and imitate the native language as an attempt to fit into the mold that makes up what people would define how a native of America is like. Throughout the novel, Henry Park attempts to mask his Korean accent in hopes to blend in as an American native. Chang-Rae Lee suggests that a person who appears to have an accent is automatically marked as someone who is not native to America. Language directly reveals where a person is native of and people can immediately identify one as an alien, immigrant, or simply, one who is not American. Asian Americans as well as other immigrants feel the need to try and hide their cultural identity in order to be deemed as a native of America in the eyes of others. Since one’s language gives away the place where one is native to, immigrants feel the need to attempt to mask their accents in hopes that they sound fluent ...
This darkly satiric poem is about cultural imperialism. Dawe uses an extended metaphor: the mother is America and the child represents a younger, developing nation, which is slowly being imbued with American value systems. The figure of a mother becomes synonymous with the United States. Even this most basic of human relationships has been perverted by the consumer culture. The poem begins with the seemingly positive statement of fact 'She loves him ...’. The punctuation however creates a feeling of unease, that all is not as it seems, that there is a subtext that qualifies this apparently natural emotional attachment. From the outset it is established that the child has no real choice, that he must accept the 'beneficence of that motherhood', that the nature of relationships will always be one where the more powerful figure exerts control over the less developed, weaker being. The verb 'beamed' suggests powerful sunlight, the emotional power of the dominant person: the mother. The stanza concludes with a rhetorical question, as if undeniably the child must accept the mother's gift of love. Dawe then moves on to examine the nature of that form of maternal love. The second stanza deals with the way that the mother comforts the child, 'Shoosh ... shoosh ... whenever a vague passing spasm of loss troubles him'. The alliterative description of her 'fat friendly features' suggests comfort and warmth. In this world pain is repressed, real emotion pacified, in order to maintain the illusion that the world is perfect. One must not question the wisdom of the omnipotent mother figure. The phrase 'She loves him...' is repeated. This action of loving is seen as protecting, insulating the child. In much the same way our consumer cultur...
Residential schools all across Canada have left its students with the difficult task of regaining a normal life after various abuses. This legacy of residential school system is still affecting people today. In the books Kiss of the Fur Queen by Tomson Highway and Creative Escape 2013 by various inmates, tell stories of attending a residential school and then dealing with the legacy of the residential school system by finding different ways to overcome the effects of the residential school system. One effects of the legacy of the residential school system is isolation. Another effect of the legacy of the residential school system is guilt. Lastly the loss of identity is an effect of the residential school system legacy. The legacy of residential schools through the works of Kiss of the Fur Queen and Creative Escape 2013 show that the legacy of residential schools has caused the survivors to feel isolated from family and community leading to various consequences, the guilt that the characters are taught in the residential schools is carried with the characters after they leave the schools, and the loss of identity the students are left with after leaving the school and going into the cities. These texts not only show that there is a legacy of the residential school system and that the characters face it but that the characters in the texts also find strategies to overcome this legacy through the use of art, traditional teachings and religion.
It is very likely that Louise Erdrich experienced some kind of racism or prejudice in her lifetime. Segregation laws were still in use while she was growing up in the fifties, and in the sixties, many of the same people still felt racist, with or without the laws. Boarding schools were not an exception to this fact either. School authorities probably did take advantage of the fact that boarding schools are away from home and not under the watchful eye of any parent. This poem demonstrates the truth of what it really felt and feels like to have lived through such bad treatment. It is disturbing to think that instead of just learning at school, Louise Erdrich, amongst other children, may have learned what it felt like to be hated. At such early ages, they taught these children that the way they were treated was how the world was supposed to be. It displays the painful scars embedded so deeply into a child, from a time that should have been the most nurturing part of his/her life.
Her goal is to replace the stereotypes surrounding Hispanic women with a set of realities, to help her do that she used her words. Meaning Cofer believes she can empower her readers through “The Myth of the Latin Woman.” Cofer also believes that language can be used to disempower because she explained to her readers how it made her feel when people stereotyped her. “Then I walked between them and to my room. My friend complimented me on my cool handling of the situation, but I confessed that I had really wanted to push the jerk into a swimming pool”(Cofer 112.) This proves that the words the man sang to Cofer had made her feel upset and disempowered. My views on this issue have become a lot more serious since reading Cofer's essay. I have personally not experienced a lot of people stereotyping me the way they did to Cofer and maybe that has something to do with the fact that I live in a diverse city and new society. But regardless if we go through it or not I feel that this is still a fight for every
In the work of Amy Tan’s “Mother’s Tongue” she provides a look into how she adapted her language to assimilate into American culture. She made changes to her language because her mother heavily relied on her for translation. She was the voice of her mother, relaying information in standard English to those who were unable to understand her mother’s broken english. She tells about her mother’s broken english and its impact on her communication to those outside their culture. Her mothers broken english limited others’ perception of her intelligence, and even her own perception of her mother was scewed: Tan said, “I know this for a fact, because when I was growing up, my mothers ‘limited’ English limited my perception of her. I was ashamed of her English. I believed that her English reflected the quality of what she had to say.” (419) The use of standard english was a critical component to Tan’s assimilation into American culture. Standard English was an element she acquired to help her mother but more importantly is was an element that helped in her gain success as a writer. Tan changed her ‘Englishes’ (family talk) to include standard English that she had learnt in school and through books, the forms of English that she did not use at home with her mother. (417-418) Tan realized the ch...
The author is pointing out that women will not be quiet about the struggles of native women. She states, "It's a disease to me, to be quiet, You see it in the communities, on the reserves, in families and stuff, where if somebody's abused, people
Her realization that she is not alone in her oppression brings her a sense of freedom. It validates her emerging thoughts of wanting to rise up and shine a light on injustice. Her worries about not wanting to grow up because of the harsh life that awaits her is a common thought among others besides the people in her community. As she makes friends with other Indians in other communities she realizes the common bonds they share, even down to the most basic such as what they eat, which comforts her and allows her to empathize with them.
The main purpose of this story, like many of her short stories, is about main female character struggling with minority who finds herself in a dangerous situation, and she cannot get help from anyone.
Unlike the earlier era, in which they had received freedom but it was so new to them, and they truly didn’t understand what it meant to be a free group, they began to move into a time period where they were finding their voice, and “finding their freedom”. Instead of writing about becoming free, and wanting freedom, they begin to act free. They begin to prove they were free by giving off confident in their culture and in their work. In her writing she has many different subsections where she rebuttals the ideas pushed onto the African American race. She proves the stereotypes wrong using the truth. The first example is, under the section titled “originality” she wrote, “it has been said so often that the negro is lacking in originality that has almost become a gospel. Outward signs seem to bear this out. But if one looks closely its falsity is immediately evident.” and , “So if we look at it squarely, the Negro is a very original being. While he lives and moves in the midst of a white civilian, everything that he touches is re-interpreted for his own use. He has modified the language, mode of food preparation, practice of medicine, and most certainly the religion of his new country, just as he adapted to suit himself the sheik haircut made famous by Rudolph Valentino.” this passage shows how much she believes in her race. She isn’t asking for anything from anyone. She doesn’t beg for respect, acceptance, or freedom, she is telling them to treat them like they are free. This passage really exemplifies the theme of accepting themselves and their culture during this time period. The African Americans were able to begin to stand up for themselves and up against the falsely acclaimed stereotypes that have been made against them. During this time period they were recreating the culture that had been taken away from them. They were finding their voice through