15 pages • 30 minutes read
Tishani DoshiThe Immigrant's Song
Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 2012A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Symbols & Motifs
Memory
In “The Immigrant’s Song,” memory works as a motif, as it is returned to several times throughout the poem. In the beginning of the poem, the speaker recalls their home country in specific detail: the smell of “coffee beans [filling] the morning,” (Line 2) and “the noise of those nameless birds,” (Line 9). The first 10 lines are full of the speaker’s memories of what it was like to live in their home country. These memories are pleasant and inviting. However, such memories are also fragmented by the memory of the men who were stolen in the night from their beds. Even though these memories are silenced, they are not forgotten. In Line 31, when friends in the new country say, “Tell us about it,” (Line 31), the memories return, flooding back in the exact way they came at the start of the poem. Details are repeated, such as the coffee bean scent and the sky.
In Line 35, memory becomes more than itself; it transforms into something that the immigrant can position and release: “You might set your memory afloat / like a paper boat down a river” (Lines 35-36). The memories held within the mind are suddenly released into the natural world—the water, the trees, the leaves, the wind. The immigrant’s past lives on in the world, joining the songs (past and memories) of so many sung before them.
War
The motif of war in “The Immigrant’s Song” creates an ominous undertone. From the first mention of war (in Lines 11-14), the poem dramatically shifts from a memory of an idyllic homeland to a traumatic moment in which everything suddenly changed. The men stolen in the night from their beds, the men who “disappeared,” (Line 14), represent either war or civil unrest and serve as a catalyst for why the speaker was forced to leave their country.
Further hints of war are peppered throughout the poem. For example, in Line 4, the mother’s headscarves hanging from the clothesline “like white flags” (Line 4) are a symbol for surrender in war. Additionally, the speaker in their new country enjoys the company of their new friends, only to remember that they must not “name [their] old friends / who are unravelling like fairy tales / in the forests of the dead” (Lines 23-25). These friends were clearly killed in violent ways; they were taken from the speaker, and now all that’s left is the story (almost too horrific to be true) of their death. The speaker admits this when they state, “Naming them will not bring them back” (Line 26). The goal of the immigrant is to forget their (often disturbing) past (“let us not burden them with stories / of war or abandonment,” [Lines 21-22]). Much of the poem is about silencing, turning away from, and forgetting or erasing what the speaker has lived through. These actions are all reactions of the war they’ve witnessed—the war that caused them to flee their home country.
Silence
The symbol of silence opens the poem. The speaker says, “Let us not speak of those days” (Line 1). However, while the speaker claims they should not speak of it, the poem then speaks about it. Despite themself, they entertain the past (see the above commentary on Memory). Silence is a complex symbol in “The Immigrant’s Song.” The speaker (speaking for and to all immigrants) talks of how, now that they’re in the new country, they should be silent about what happened in their old country. Instead, they should speak about their new world (“the gates and bridges and stores,” [Line 17]) and their lives now while they “wait for the future / to arrive” (Lines 27-28) in the form of children and grandchildren who will know nothing of the war, the terror, the death, and who will live only in this new, promising land.
Doshi, in writing this poem, contradicts the speaker. Doshi the poet speaks (sings) the immigrant’s song. She gives the immigrant a voice—even when the speaker in the poem says they should have no voice, and if they do speak, their voice should only speak of new world things. When the speaker is directly asked to speak about their past, they do not clearly speak (“And you might consider telling them,” [Line 32]). The speaker only considers speaking about their past—even when asked, they still feel the need to keep their memories hidden.
