Checking Out Me History Flashcards
Language quotes
‘Bandage up me with me own history’-imagine of bandaging suggests helping someone and agard is criticising the way in british colonies thought they were superiror and where ‘helping’ colonised.
Repetiton ‘and all dat’-dismissive attitude to what he was taught in school
Language of nature - ‘mountain’, ‘fire’, ‘stream’, ‘river’, ‘star’, ‘sunrise’ -all these natural images are associated with the history he is now bringing to light – emphasises the ‘natural’ power of this culture
Imagery of ‘carving out me identity’-metaphor for takes time and hard work but produces something worth while
Form/structure
Non-italic stanzas contain a lot of repetition of ‘Dem tell me’-The repetition conveys a sense of being bombarded, brainwashed even by a biased education system
Stanzas in italics-him now ‘tell[ing]’ ‘dem’/ the reader about important aspects of history that have not been taught in school and italics visually emphasises the importance and have own seperate spaces on page
Contrast between references in the non-italic stanzas and references in the italicised stanzas- non-italic stanzas are inconsequential – children’s stories such as Dick Whittington, or nursery rhymes such as ‘de cow who jump over de moon’ – whereas in the italicised stanzas, we learn about great leaders such as Toussaint L’Ouverture
Using phoentic spelling and no punctaution- rebbeling against the rules he was taught by british at school mocking there education system
