I Lost My Talk

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 2007

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Summary

Background

Poem Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Literary Devices

Themes

The Silencing of Speech

In “I Lost My Talk,” the speaker opens by saying that she has lost her ability to speak her mother-tongue. However, she did not lose it by her own mistake or accident; instead, it was forcibly stolen by the white power structure—as she writes, “you took it away” (Line 2). Her birth language was stolen when she was “a little girl” (Line 3) by the white faculty and staff at the residential school Shubenacadie, an institution that should have protected children, but instead abused them. As the speaker reflects on her past, a sense of trauma emerges, especially in the second stanza, when the speaker’s calm tone shifts to one of pain and bitterness; she now accuses the white institution of subterfuge and theft, describing their attack on her native language: “You snatched it away” (Line 5), amplifying the original milder “took it away” into the jargon of criminality.

Trauma can sometimes leave individuals too paralyzed to speak. This poem shows an adult speaker now able to share her story after a time of silence. Nevertheless, the speaker does not hide the serious emotional consequences. In the second stanza, the speaker laments that she now speaks like the thief or thieves who stole her language—forced to assimilate into their culture, she has lost her originality and now “think like you / […] create like you” (Lines 6-7).

The poem ends with very tempered hope. In the third stanza, the speaker makes it clear that the attempt to erase her first language failed: “Two ways I talk / Both ways I say” (Lines 10-11). At the same time, there is no getting away from the white power structures that oppressed her as a child and still hold the sociopolitical power in Canada when she is an adult: “Your way is more powerful” (Line 12). As a result, the speaker still finds her language less accessible—its strength is diminished in the presence of the dominant language; importantly, the poem is written in English. In the last stanza, she asks her former oppressor to give her the space to recover her origins: “Let me find my talk” (Line 14). The fact that she requests permission shows how hard her childhood experiences at the oppressive school have been to fully shake off; nevertheless, the speaker is making an admirable attempt to speak for herself.

A Search for Identity

The speaker of “I Lost My Talk” wants to recover not just her language but everything that is associated with it—her cultural identity, origin story, and the traditions she was forced to abandon in the residential school that tried to strip racial markers from her and her peers.

In the second stanza, the speaker rues that she not only talks like the oppressor who “snatched” (Line 5) her first language, but also, “I think like you / I create like you” (Lines 7-8). She feels as if she is becoming a duplicate of the dominant “you,” whose aesthetics are replacing her own. This leads to a “scrambled” way of speaking and even being (Line 9). The speaker feels pulled between her two ways of speaking, but the powerful direction, as white society deems it, is not her own. This forces her to adopt the cultural identity of her former oppressors rather than that of her family and her ancestors.

In the last stanza, however, the speaker takes active steps to reclaim her identity. She reaches out her “hand” in Line 13, a gesture of friendship and bridging, and adds that she needs the time to recoup what she has lost: “Let me find my talk” (Line 14). These are small steps toward reclamation. Her search extends beyond finding her speech when she mentions in Line 15, “So I can teach you about me” (Line 15). This “me” is not just her language but also the traditions, mannerisms, beliefs, values, and more that accompany that language and make up her cultural identity. Unlike the dominant culture that was imposed on her through force and without her say-so, she gently offers to teach her culture to others, showing a better way forward.

The Creation of “Other”

The first two lines of the poem establish a “me” versus “you” oppositional dynamic. While the “I” is capitalized and the “y” in “you” is lower case, it is really the “I” that is otherized. The “you” has snatched and taken away the speaker’s way of talking at a young age, leaving the “I” to defend herself and cope with the effects of this trauma as an adult.

The speaker acknowledges that her words are often “scrambled” (Line 9), suggesting the unclear nature of her speech to listeners, placing her in a position of less importance than those fluent in the dominant language. She even acknowledges that “Your way is more powerful” (Line 12), implying that her way of speaking does not have the same kind of clout in the dominant white culture. Many language options are out there, but only one matters, and it happens not to be the language that is the prime or cultural language of the speaker. Essentially, not all languages are created equal.

At the end of the poem, the speaker does not demand that she reclaim her language, but asks permission: “gently I offer my hand and ask, \ Let me find my talk” (Lines 13-14). Her approach is specifically non-aggressive and does not rely on force because she eschews the tactics of the “you” and instead wants to find a practical approach to being herself in a society that recognizes her as “other.” The last line of the poem, while showing some semblance of peace, still shows the clear separation between “I” and “you,” suggesting that the divide between dominant and marginalized culture still remains intact.