Originally Flashcards
We came from our own country
We and Our - Plural Pronouns - suggests shared experience. Sense of possession and belonging
Came - Word Choice - past tense/memory
I stared
Stared - Word Choice - Sense of silent desperation
the street, the house, the vacant rooms
List - emphasises how much is being left behind
where we didn’t live any more
Enjambment - again highlights the change, no going back
All childhood is emigration
Word Choice - idea of a journey/different changes and stages of life
Some are slow
Long Sentences - relates to the idea of slow change
Others are sudden. Your accent wrong
Change of sentence length to match abruptness of some changes
Your accent wrong - not just different, more complex
unimagined
word Choice - sense of confusion, uncertainty, out with experience
I want our own country
Repeats idea from opening line, emphasising the idea of belongings/ origins
But
Word Choice - conjunction indicates change
you forget, or don’t recall, or don’t change
List - same idea for emphasis of change being difficult to pinpoint
Do I only think
Enjambment - emphasises sense of uncertainty
And I hesitate
Abrupt final sentence which emphasises the poet’s uncertainty about her identity and where she feels she belongs
I lost a river, culture, speech, sense of first space and the right place?
List - lists all she thinks she may have lost, but poses it as a question highlighting uncertainty
