In 2009, Warsan Shire wrote the poem \u201cConversations about home (at a deportation centre)\u201d. This piece was based on the stories she had heard from refugees in abandoned Somali Embassy in Rome. Shire wrote the poem \u201cConversations about home (at a deportation centre)\u201d 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”.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\nno 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<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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\u2019t let you stay.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
no one leaves home unless home chases you
fire under feet
hot blood in your belly
it\u2019s 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\u2019t be going back.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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<\/p>\n\n\n\n
no one chooses refugee camps
or strip searches where your
body is left aching
or prison,<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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\u2019ve become
but i know that anywhere
is safer than here<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\nRevised Plot Summary (Removing some analysis)<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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\u2014such 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\u2014like a boy from school with whom they snuck a kiss\u2014take 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. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
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. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Refugees don’t just decide that they want to live in uncomfortable refugee camps, undergo invasive strip searches, or be imprisoned\u2014if 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. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Original plot summary link<\/p>\n\n\n\n