How Warsan Shire Came Up With the Poem
In 2009, Warsan Shire wrote the poem “Conversations about home (at a deportation centre)”. This piece was based on the stories she had heard from refugees in abandoned Somali Embassy in Rome. Shire wrote the poem “Conversations about home (at a deportation centre)” to open the eyes to people who may not understand the harsh reality of being an undocumented refugee in Europe. Shire also states that the conversations she had to create this poem opened her eyes as well. This poem ended up being the basis for the poem I read this semester, “Home”.
Home by Warsan Shire
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
your neighbors running faster than you
breath bloody in their throats
the boy you went to school with
who kissed you dizzy behind the old tin factory
is holding a gun bigger than his body
you only leave home
when home won’t let you stay.
no one leaves home unless home chases you
fire under feet
hot blood in your belly
it’s not something you ever thought of doing
until the blade burnt threats into
your neck
and even then you carried the anthem under
your breath
only tearing up your passport in an airport toilets
sobbing as each mouthful of paper
made it clear that you wouldn’t be going back.
you have to understand,
that no one puts their children in a boat
unless the water is safer than the land
no one burns their palms
under trains
beneath carriages
no one spends days and nights in the stomach of a truck
feeding on newspaper unless the miles travelled
means something more than journey.
no one crawls under fences
no one wants to be beaten
pitied
no one chooses refugee camps
or strip searches where your
body is left aching
or prison,
because prison is safer
than a city of fire
and one prison guard
in the night
is better than a truckload
of men who look like your father
no one could take it
no one could stomach it
no one skin would be tough enough
the
go home blacks
refugees
dirty immigrants
asylum seekers
sucking our country dry
niggers with their hands out
they smell strange
savage
messed up their country and now they want
to mess ours up
how do the words
the dirty looks
roll off your backs
maybe because the blow is softer
than a limb torn off
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
home is the barrel of the gun
and no one would leave home
unless home chased you to the shore
unless home told you
to quicken your legs
leave your clothes behind
crawl through the desert
wade through the oceans
drown
save
be hunger
beg
forget pride
your survival is more important
no one leaves home until home is a sweaty voice in your ear
saying leave,
run away from me now
i don’t know what i’ve become
but i know that anywhere
is safer than here
Revised Plot Summary (Removing some analysis)
The speaker, talking about what makes people become refugees, declares that nobody flees their home unless that home has become a shark’s mouth. The speaker goes on to detail the violence and terror that pushes people to flee from their own countries—such as when they realize that everyone around them is fleeing too, some people even more quickly than they are, running so fast that it makes their breath painful and ragged. They flee when regular people—like a boy from school with whom they snuck a kiss—take up huge weapons and join in the fighting. The violence and horror of these people’s homes push them out, lighting a fire beneath their feet and filling them with the intense, urgent need to escape. People never even dream of fleeing their homes until the threat of being killed is immediate and undeniable, like a hot knife at their neck.
People stay holding onto their passports until the last possible moment, when they reach the airport when then they cry deeply while tearing it up and swallowing the pieces. The speaker says, that people don’t simply risk their own children’s lives by trying to cross international waters unless it is safer than what is waiting for them. No one lets the skin get scraped off their palms while hanging on to the underside of a moving train, or agrees to be locked for weeks or months inside a smuggler’s truck, unless the pain of the journey is better than staying home. Refugees don’t want to have to crawl under border fences and walls, or to be abused by border patrol guards, police, or angry citizens. They don’t want be pitied.
Refugees don’t just decide that they want to live in uncomfortable refugee camps, undergo invasive strip searches, or be imprisoned—if it weren’t for the fact that a camp or prison is safer than the war-ravaged place left behind, or the fact that being raped by one foreign prison guard is preferable to being gang-raped by a group of their fellow countrymen. No one would swallow having racist insults and slurs hurled at them in the countries where they settle, where they’re called dirty and uncivilized and told to go home or that they’re lazy and just trying to freeload. Refugees put up with their new neighbors believing that their homeland’s horror is the refugees’ own fault, and that they’ve come to inflict the same chaos on these new countries. How do refugees deal with all this hatred, the speaker asks? They deal with it because it’s still better than having a body part blown off by a bomb in their war-torn home countries. Even this abuse is gentler than being raped by a group of men back home. Taunts and insults are easier to handle than witnessing your home be completely destroyed, your friends and family killed, and your child blown to bits. The speaker wants to go home but can’t it’d be like walking into a shark’s mouth or in front of a loaded gun.
People only put themselves through nearly drowning, losing everything, starving, and begging when their literal survival is on the line. People don’t become refugees until their home itself tells them they have to escape right now. They leave only when home has become utterly unrecognizable, and when they’d be safer anywhere else.
Original plot summary link
https://www.litcharts.com/poetry/warsan-shire/home
Why I Chose the Direction I Went In
I chose the direction I went with this project because I noticed that everyone’s changes made a horror story of immigration to a happy story. Unfortunately the world is not a happy place, so I wanted to find a way to still talk about the horrors of the world. Changing home to become a sanctuary that people hide away in helped to find a different toxic relationship to what home is. The main Idea I wanted to stick with was that the world may still suck, but home is still safe.
Originally, I wanted to just have it be so at the end of the day you can always go home, but I started to connect this plot change to my own life. My mom has always harbored a fear of the world, and I wanted to build on this for my plot change. My mom always believed that life was for work, and you go home. Traveling and going out just isn’t safe anymore. I promise she is not crazy. As my sister and I grew up there was no concerts, as their could be a bombing or a shooting. We did not travel to far because what if we couldn’t get back, or we got kidnapped. Now my mom has began to realize that that was a toxic way to think of the world, and currently as I am twenty years old she wants to live her life to the fullest, going to concerts and traveling. My mom grew out of missing out because of the negative what if mentality. What I wrote about in my changed plot demonstrates how toxic this mentality is for a person, especially if the whole world thought this way.
Changed Plot, Plot Summary
The speaker, talking about What makes people stay where they are, declaring that home is in a field of flowers. Home is a place where people can feel safe.
The speaker goes on to detail the violence and terror in the world that makes people want to just hide away in their homes. The terror that causes neighbors to not know each other because no one would dare to leave their property. They hide away when regular people—like a boy who lives one house over—take up huge weapons and join in the fighting. The violence and horror of the world causes people to hide away in their homes, but burning fires in the streets cause people to stay away. The flames don’t dare to enter their property.
People never even dream of fleeing their homes, their homes are the only places they can feel safe. And even then, people still leave. Then, they cry tears of joy while tearing their passports up and swallowing the pieces, knowing full well that this means they can never return to their place of origin, because it is no longer their home. The tears of joy quickly turns into horror when the people who leave learn about the darkness that waits for them. The speaker says, that people don’t simply risk their own children’s lives by trying to leave their home, because home is safer than what is in the world.
People don’t willingly put themselves through the pain and horror of trying to leave home, because no one dares to figure out what the outside is like. No one wants to learn the pain of getting skin scraped off their palms or being taken by people they don’t know. People don’t want abuse or hatred from people who have no right to speak on who they are. They want people to feel sorry for them.
People don’t just decide to leave sanctuary. Home is the place where they have food, clean water, and family who love them. They don’t want to know the feeling of yelling no to fellow countrymen while they don’t listen. If they stay home, no one would dare to touch them in a way to cause pain. Nobody could survive all this horror the world holds, the speaker insists; nobody would be strong enough to withstand all this ,and that’s why people stay home.
There are no racist insults and slurs hurled at them, when they are home. People don’t have to put up with new neighbors because no one leaves. There are no new neighbors, but that doesn’t matter anyway because they didn’t know them in the first place. How do people stay home all day, the speaker asks? They are able to do it because living in a field of flowers is better than dealing with what the world has to offer for them. Body parts cannot be blown off by bombs on the streets, if no one leaves home. People don’t leave home when it is in a field of flowers. The people who leave only get to see the darkness that the world has to offer. It is always sunny when you are home, so why leave?
Changing the Poem (Why Leave?)
no one leaves home
home is in a field of flowers
faces of strangers
strangers that live only fifty feet away
those strangers are your neighbors.
streets full of threats
the boy who you see from your window
who passed you notes with paper airplanes
is holding a gun bigger than his body
you don’t leave home
when the streets are not safe.
no one leaves home when the streets are on fire
fire that wouldn’t dare to move into your property
leaving home
it’s not something you ever think of doing.
The ones that leave
tearing up passports in an airport toilet
crying tears of joy as they tear the pages
with no intention to return.
Tears of joy quickly turn to horror
when you learn that darkness awaits you.
No one risks their children’s innocence by leaving home
why teach them
darkness
pain
and suffering
when home is in a field of flowers.
no one goes through the pain of leaving home
learning what the outside has to hold.
The skin on your hands
stays soft and unscraped
no fear of being taken
when the person is a stranger to you
no abuse or hatred
from people who have no right to speak on who you are.Everyone stays home
you don’t want the darkness
you want to feel safe
you want to feel comfortable
they want to be pitied.
No one leaves sanctuary
with no worries of food
or clean water,
they have love waiting home.
You do not want to know the feeling
of yelling no to countrymen
all while they do not listen.
At home
no one would dare to touch
not in a way to inflict pain
no one could survive the worlds horrors
thats why you stay home.
No racist insults
or slurs
no one is different
they live in the same home
the dirty looks
do not exist
because there are no new people
no one talks to their neighbors
they are just another stranger.How do you stay home all day?
When you are home
body parts are not blown off
by bombs in the street,
the scolding heat of the fire
cannot sear your skin
I can’t leave home,
home is in a field of flowers.
The world can only offer darkness
while home is always sunny.
If home is always sunny,
why leave?
Featured Image
Flower Field, flowers, house, sky, field, HD wallpaper. Peakpx. All Rights Reserved.
