Home – Literature and Immigration

What is this poem and how did I get to it

Home by Warsan Shire is a poem about the reasons why people leave their home. This poem depicts home as an evil force that drives them out. This is reasons why people drop everything and immigrate to somewhere different.

Going against most of what we hear in our classes about AI, I believe that there is a correct way to use AI with everything. I was able to utilize Chat GPT to help me find a story that would be within my interests. Once I put in the excel sheet of recommendations, the course description, and a quick blurb of what I tend to read, I was given a list of recommendations that I may enjoy. What I enjoyed about this list was that there was summaries past the back cover, amazon links, PDF links, and covers to novels. Also if I had an interest in a story and wanted to learn more, I was able to ask. I believe that this helped me enjoy every piece I read this semester for this course.

After discussing transparency in class I recreated a chat to imitate what I had used to find the poem Home by Warsan Shire. I was not logged into my account when I had done this chat, but the link at the end of this post will send you to a chat similar to what I used to find my readings this semester.

My Experience

This was my first poem I have worked with this semester, and I feel that this tells just as powerful of a story as the novels I have read. With each line there was something impactful said.

“no one leaves home unless
home is the mouth of a shark
you only run for the border
when you see the whole city running as well”

I think that this quote somewhat relates to the novel American Dirt, which I read for the last post. In American Dirt by Jeanine Cummins Lydia and Luca ran from their home because home meant death, and I think that this is exactly what these first lines of Home are saying. This poem starts with the metaphor “Home is the mouth of a shark” and obviously in the mouth of a shark means death. Home for many immigrants becomes more of a danger than a safety. This metaphor to the reasoning of why immigrants leave home is very powerful because of how it relates something that is supposed to be safe to something that is very dangerous.

“or the words are more tender
than fourteen men between
your legs
or the insults are easier
to swallow
than rubble
than bone
than your child body
in pieces.
i want to go home,
but home is the mouth of a shark”

This section of the poem stood out to me a lot because it was almost like I could hear the anger, and frustration the author is going through. I can feel the build up up to “i want to go home” and then the release of “but home is the mouth of a shark”. I think the way that the lines almost ramble together without any stopping causes this feeling. The author says ” i want to go home” and I think that goes with the message that no one is leaving because they want to, they are leaving because they have to. Right after that the metaphor of the shark is brought back again, and this reinforces the message that home is not safe.

The author talks about all these terrible things that happens to immigrants, things that makes someone just want to go home and lay in bed, but then says that home is dangerous. What it seems like is being said is that it is better to withstand the pain, insults, and the loss of innocence then to go home, because home is dangerous.

Classifying my Experience

So far I haven’t been able to pin down an exact experience I had felt from this section of the poem. I did feel the build up of frustration and then a release of sadness, but that wasn’t how I felt. In a way I was able to understand how the author felt, but didn’t really have an emotion for myself. Because of that I am leaning towards immersion, because I felt what was going on in the story being told. Immersion is described in the experience glossary as “Absorbing or engrossing involvement in a story. You might feel as though you’ve been swallowed by the story.”.

With further conversation in class I began to think into a feeling of understanding, but I feel as if I already understand why immigrants leave. Once I got stuck here I moved into the idea of my experience possibly being compassion. Compassion is described in the Merriam-Webster as “sympathetic consciousness of others’ distress together with a desire to alleviate it” and I feel that this is closer to what I had felt in most of this poem, but especially this section. The mouth of the shark metaphor helps to show that there is distress among immigrants that their home is not safe, and I felt that I had to show some compassion to what they go through. This all goes back to the understanding feeling I originally thought because I did understand that immigrants leave because something is not safe for them, but I never fully understood what some of the horrific things they have to go through.

Determining the Narrative Technology

I think that it is possible that poetic language could be the narrative technology used in this section and possibly most of this poem. Poetic language is described as “Rearranges usual speech so that we slow down and notice things we wouldn’t notice otherwise”, and obviously a poem as poetic language but I feel that it really is what made this story so impactful. The way the lines are broken up allow for things to be connected in a way that otherwise wouldn’t have. The way that “i want to go home, but home is in the mouth of a shark” is said right after all the terrible things allows for that feeling of release from the frustration to move into sadness.

After further analysis of how I felt in this experience I noticed that the author uses the word “You” a lot. The poem uses a form of the word you twenty-eight times. Quotes are seen all thorughout the poem seemingly making it as if you as the reader is going through this. I feel that the authour tried to put a reader in the lives of immigrants, almost as if they were aiming for the childhood phrase “put yourself in their shoes“. Readers of this poem being to read this poem as if they were an immigrant that would have dealt with these terrible things if they did not move.