Gender and Idea of Identity Due to Migration Through Poems

BACKGROUND

These days, the word “migration” is becoming a domestic word, which is very often to be heard in daily life. Around the world, many people leave their place to satisfy their needs and search for a better life. We learned and analyzed, the reasons and factors of migration, as well as the struggle and difficulties faced by immigrants and refugees. Like it or not, migration has become part of the history and cultures of people worldwide.

Talking about the cultures and history of the world, one has to see poetry as part of it. Poems as result of poetry. Poetry is literature that evokes a concentrated imaginative awareness of experience or a specific emotional response through language chosen and arranged for its meaning, sound, and rhythm. The editor of “Poetry” magazine, in the article from The Atlantic, expressing the significant power of poetry.” it’s always been speaking to people about the kinds of things they’re talking about now because one of the things poetry is really good at is anticipating things that need discussion”. He states that people who write poetry are aware of what is going on in the world around them, and take personal experiences to provide a lens to connect those to the culture. Poets are noble observers. “poets are participating in what makes a difference in the world. If you perceive that politics is a way of making a difference, and you engage in it, then you can get something done. And the same can be said of poetry”.

Based on the explanations above, I would like to see how poetry is one of the media to express some issues and concerns related to migration. This time will be about gender and identity concerns, and the effects on the younger generations of migrant families.

The Poem and The Poet :“Accent “ and Excerpt from “Advice I Would Have Given My Mother on Her Wedding Day” by Rupi Kaur

my voice is the offspring

of two countries colliding

what is there to be ashamed of

If english and my mother tongue

made love

my voice is her father’s words

and mother’s accent

what is the matter if

my mouth carries two worlds

(Accent- Rupi Kaur)

take your journals and paintings

across the ocean when you leave

these will remind you who you are

when you get lost amid new citiesthey

will also remind your childrenyou had an entire life before them

(Excerpt – Rupi Kaur)

Rupi Kaur is one of the young poets that I have been following on social media and enjoying her books and poems. In March 2015, an Instagram post by Kaur broke the internet. As part of a project for her Visual Rhetoric course at the University of Waterloo, Ontario, Kaur created a series of six photos to demystify the period. One of these—a photo of her lying in bed, back to the camera, with a patch of menstrual blood on her pants and bed sheet— was removed by Instagram for violating its community guidelines. Kaur took to Facebook, calling the photo-sharing platform out for its hypocrisy, and said, ‘I will not apologize for not feeding the ego and pride of misogynist society that will have my body in underwear but not be okay with a small leak”.

In the mid-90s, the then-three-year-old, along with her family, left her small village in Hoshiarpur, Punjab to reunite with her father in Montreal. Her father had fled to Canada as a refugee a month after she was born, joining numerous Sikhs who left their home state fearing persecution after the 1984 anti-Sikh riots. Before settling in Brampton, a Toronto suburb, Kaur’s family moved seven times in five years. While she soon realized that home was wherever she was, her writing started to reflect a deep longing for what she had left behind. Today, Kaur is a New York Times best selling poet and a spoken-word performer.

Identity and Gender in The Poems

“Accent” gave us some hints about gender, especially on the major influence of a mother in the grown-up process of a child.

A grown-up in a patriarchal family and using the Father’s family name, Ms. Kaur indeed shows the major influence of her mother in her life. The second part of this poem shows that her unique accent and voice, which is always part of her identity, came from her matriarch influence. As Ms. Kaur migrated to the new country at the age of three, together with her mother joined her Father, who left earlier, we may assume, although debatable, that her early and basic education was majority mostly done by her mother and the matriarch side.

The adaptation process was easier for her at such a young age, compared with the process faced by her mother. Not only was she forced to be uprooted and leave her zone, as the migration was due to conflict, but she was also being forced to adapt to the foreign culture, and new environment, and cope with all strange situations and threats while struggling to manage another life as a wife and a mother to her child.

Ms. Kaur once said that her mother has sacrificed a lot for them, especially after migrated to the new country. This is reflected in her poem “Advice I Would Have Given My Mother on Her Wedding Day”, especially in the excerpt that I have mentioned above. The excerpt implicitly shows the enjoyment and happiness that she had, as a young girl before marriage and mother’s roles took and toll on her life, and more so after the migration.

Patriarch has been reflecting in the traditional model of household, where the man is the breadwinner, and women take care of children. In the past time, for migrant families that came from this culture system, women were more passive and excluded in the migration decision, as they were migrated because of husband and children. This also affects the treatment and behavior towards son and daughter, especially in the house chores, roles, and rules.

For migrant families from conflict areas or third-world countries, for a better settlement, both parents usually hold two or three jobs, which will cut their time with children and family life. Because of this, the mother has to put extra time and energy into household chores and children’s care at home, after coming back from work outside. I assume this is also one kind of sacrifice that is meant by Ms. Kaur.*

Ref:

• https://www.britannica.com/art/poetry
• https://scalar.usc.edu/works/281—final-project—aa/poetrys-cultural-effect
• See Kaur, Rupi. The Sun and Her Flowers. New York, N.Y.: Simon & Schuster, 2017.
• https://openthemagazine.com/lounge/books/rupi-kaur-life-in-lower-case/