Search For My Tongue

• (title) search for my tongue

  an extended metaphor for her language/identity

  search - verb - she has lost it

  my tongue - idiom for language (mother tongue)
• you ask me

  I ask you, what would you do

  your mouth

  you could not

  direct address - accusation tone, addresing the readers

  her intended reader - someone who is not bilingual

  caesura, accusational towards western people, speech-like tone
• mother tongue could not know the foreign tongue

  lack of identity

  alienation of the two

  personification

  contrast

  connotations of isolation

  
  

  but later contradicts herself with the embedded use of her mother tongue.
• enjambment

  stream of consciousness, she is speaking emotionally

  her languages is connected more than she thinks
• place, you had so peak, rot, it, spit, but, night

  plosive - blunt, harsh and sharp, expresses her anger

  harsh consonants - discomfort and a struggle of a fight
• would rot, rot and die in your mouth until you had to spit it out

  imagery of death + repetiiton = fear + harsh, violent images of

  direct address - the reader appreciates the difficulty of her situation
• I thought I spit it out

  but overnight while I dream,

  dreams connote a subconscious, comfort and relaxment is brought out once her mother tongue appears and comes back

  
  

  subordinate clause - she does not get to complete the sentence before it intrudes
• the stanza in Ghujarati

  middle stanza - embedded within her and she cannot lose it. it is rooted deeply within her (suggested by natural/growing imagery)

  
  

  it floods back naturally and unexpectedly and contrasts the idea of losing it

  
  

  translation + transliteration (phonetic spelling), how a non-ghujarati speaker may pronounce it
• what is the tone of the third stanza?

  celebratory and triumphant
• 1st person narrative

  an autobiographical account
• grows, shoot, grows longer, bud, bud, blossoms

  the floral imagery of life

  natural language to describe growth and life - the natural beauty of her mother tongue which overpowers her foreign language. contrasting the previous death imagery, now encouraging life and positive growth
• it

  indefinite article - unfamiliar to her, ironic as it is her mother tongue not her foreign tongue.
• what is the change in tone

  defeated tone - triumphant tone

  conversational throughout as she addresses the reader
• lack of meter/rhyme

  uncertain and lost, concerned and talking about a serious topic
• Themes


  identity

  loss/grief

  languages at war

  immigration/cultural heritage

  extended metaphor of the tongue/mouth/language
• compare to


  Blessing, poem at thirty nine, remember, war photographer.