Originally

Theme: Homesickness, Transformation, Identity

Structure: The poem is divided into lines of 8 and is in free - verse.

Global Issue: How bicultural upbringing causes an identity crisis in an individual

Field of Inquiry: Beliefs, culture and identity

Non - Literary Text: Immigra

Annotations:

First Stanza: The speaker describes her family's journey from her own country to a new country. The "red room" she and her family travels in is a train carriage. The colour "red" symbolizes danger, anger and intense passion, feelings shared by the speaker as she is unhappy leaving her home. Since she is moving to a completely unknown country, there is a sense of both danger and anger along with the longing for her old home inside her. Her brothers cry for home, who are also homesick like their sister. She lists the streets, houses and rooms which she was reluctantly leaving behind. She then looks at the eyes of a blind toy. This line is an irony since it is not possible to look into the eyes (buttons) of a blind toy. It is also a symbolism of the uncertain future ahead of the speaker to which she is completely ignorant of, or rather, "blind" to it.

Second Stanza: This stanza describes the new atmosphere of her new home where the speaker is trying to adjust. The word "emigration" describes the new changes in her lifestyle. Her changes are both slow and sudden, leaving her lost, confused and scared. The only things familiar to her are the cornered walls which further lead to unfamiliar "pebble-dashed walls". These are English walls which indicate that the speaker has moved from a foreign country to England. "Big boys" symbolise her brothers, who, unlike her, have fit in better and faster than the speaker. She does not understand what they speak since their dialect and language have changed and blended in with their local surroundings. Meanwhile, her parents are filled with anxiety, which hurts the speaker the way a loose tooth would. She decides that she wants to go back to her own country.

Third Stanza: Here, the speaker has adapted to her new home. However, there is no tone of happiness over this change. She has forgotten most of her younger days. Seeing her brothers blend in so well, she feels only a sliver of shame now that she has lost her original tongue. She stubbornly wants to hold on to her old self. However, she has become a part of her surroundings. She describes her change the way a snake sheds its skin, leaving its old self behind and emerging as a new animal. In doing so, she wonders of all she has left behind - her original culture, speech and sense of place. When she is asked of her origins, she hesitates since she is no longer has a part of her original self left in her.

Stylistic Devices:

• Repetition: "Home, / Home" 
• Personification: "Home, as the miles rushed back to the city," - 'miles' personified with the child's homesickness
• Asyndeton: "the street, the house, the vacant rooms"
• Assonance: "our own" - emphasizes the sense of belonging
• Imagery: "red room"
• Symbolism: "blind toy" - the speaker is blind to the uncertain future ahead of her
• Simile: "I remember my tongue / shedding its skin like a snake", "My parents’ anxiety stirred like a loose tooth / in my head"
• Alliteration: "which fell through the fields, our mother singing / our father’s name...", "seeing your brother swallow a slug"
• Internal Rhyme: "...fields, our mother singing / our father’s name to the turn of the wheels."
• Enjambment: "leaving you standing, resigned, up an avenue / where no one you know stays.", "the street, the house, the vacant rooms / where we didn’t live any more."
• Sibilance: "shedding its skin like a snake", "seeing your brother swallow a slug", "skelf of shame"
• Rhetorical Question: "Do I only think / I lost a river, culture, speech, sense of first space / and the right place?" - the speaker questions her identity, making even the reader think over the importance of original and acquired identities.