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.
Themes
The Immigrant
The most prominent theme in the poem is the immigrant’s story. The speaker (speaking as a collective “we” and addressing an audience of other immigrants) stands at the crux of two worlds. However, because they’ve arrived in a new world where costumes and cultures are different, they implore themself (and other immigrants) to keep their past, the customs of their country of origin, and what went on there (“war or abandonment,” [Line 22]) a secret. Themes of immigration often discuss topics such as homesickness, loss, alienation, and coping as the immigrant seeks and tries to fit into the new country’s social circles and cultural customs. In “The Immigrant’s Song,” all these aspects of what it means to be an immigrant are apparent. There is silencing (“Let us not speak,” [Line 1]), erasure (“Let us not remember,” [Line 15]), and even denial (“Let us not name our old friends [...] in the forests of the dead,” [Lines 23-25]). To fit in, immigrants tend to turn their back on where they came from (particularly if they came from a place of violence, genocide, or war); instead, they try to look forward.
However, there is still a part of them that is always left in the past. A part of the immigrant always remains in their homeland, where certain customs were followed (“our mothers’ headscarves,” [Line 3]). This is one of the reasons Doshi’s speaker concludes the poem with a return to the memories of the immigrant’s country. No matter how hard one might try to assimilate, the memories still return (in this case, when friends in the new country ask to hear about it: “‘Tell us about it,’” they might ask,” [Line 31]).
Song
Doshi named her poem “The Immigrant’s Song.” Song is evident in the way Doshi composes the poem. By using anaphora and repetition (“Let us not,” (Line 1); “Let us,” [Line 27]), Doshi establishes an incantatory voice. Incantation, often used in song, refers to a series of words that are sung or spoken during a ceremony or ritual. Therefore, Doshi’s poem resembles a song through repetition and through stacking these repeated, incantatory phrases on top of one another. More so, song is another, archaic word for poem or poetry. However, by titling this “The Immigrant’s Song” as opposed to “The Immigrant’s Poem,” Doshi creates a sense of music that carries with it deeper feelings of reflection, lamentation, and sorrow.
Song also bridges into story. Stemming from an oral tradition, poetry or songs were sung by bards; they were long-winded stories or tales. Therefore, by calling this poem a song, Doshi unravels the immigrant’s tale. The poem (or song) begins in the immigrant's homeland, detailing pleasant, sensory memories (coffee beans, tree leaves), but the poem is rocked by one harrowing, negative memory: “Let us not speak of the men, / stolen from their beds at night” (Lines 11-12). The poem follows the immigrants’ journey to the new country, explores feelings of confusion as they try to fit into the new world, until finally the poem returns to the smell of coffee, “the dusty street” (Line 34), and the memories that they would not let themself willingly remember nor celebrate. “The Immigrant’s Song” sings a loose narrative but it also gives the immigrant a voice to lament what they’ve had to leave behind and what they’ve lost simply by being an immigrant.
Disappearance
The theme of disappearance in “The Immigrant’s Song” functions on multiple levels. First, there is the mysterious disappearance of the men in Line 14. This is a pivotal moment in the poem both narratively and formally; the poem literally breaks into two on the word “disappeared” (Line 14), which is also offset by italics. By giving this one word its own line, Doshi calls attention to it in a unique and haunting way. Although Doshi’s speaker does not share why the men were “stolen from their beds at night” (Line 12)—and perhaps the speaker does not know—this concept of vanishing is monumental; it likely drove the speaker and their family to leave the country because the country was becoming unsafe.
However, the theme of disappearance extends farther than the narrative of the men. By emigrating from their country to a new country, the speaker also “disappeared.” They could no longer be found in their homeland. What’s more, in the new country, due to the need to silence their past, the speaker’s memories begin to “disappear” as they decide “Instead, let us speak of our lives now — / the gates and bridges and stores” (Lines 16-17). The speaker decides, partway through the poem, to erase the past from their mind as they try to engage with their “new brothers” (Line 20) in fun, celebratory ways, rather than “burden them with stories / of war or abandonment” (Lines 21-22). However, their memories (and their past) are never completely erased (and they do return in the final movement of the poem beginning with Line 31); however, the theme of disappearance, beginning with the mention of the vanishing men, deeply runs throughout this poem.
