Checking out me history

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  • Created by: loupardoe
  • Created on: 19-03-17 10:31

summary

  • the speaker explains what have been teaching him as 'history' and expresses a sense that he feels ignorant of his 'own identity'
  • this identity is not explicity stated but the speaker is implicitly presented as a Caribbean British man
  • he lists key but distant dates in British history, nursery rhymes and folk tales as things that he has been taught
  • he also gives information about Toussaint l'Ouverture, Nanny the Maroon and Mary Seacole, all of whom he was never taught about
  • he ends by declaring that he is finding out about his own history for himself

key aspects

  • agard uses Caribbean dialect to create a distinctively personal voice
  • he constasts the pronouns 'dem' and 'me' to show reclamation of power
  • the poem's structure shows Caribbean history as separate from European

key setting: England

  • england is implicitly presented as a colonial power, imposing its history on the speaker, regardless of his caribbean heritage
  • the culture of england is summarised through a mixture of nursery rhymes and folk tales as well as more traditional history, none of which represents recent history
  • the idea that this history is put together through choice and could therefore have been constructued differently is emphasised through Agard's insistence that 'dem tell me wha dem want to tell me'

key theme: identity

  • agard presents histroy as key to understanding identity
  • he uses caribbean dialect, such as 'dem' in place of 'they', as one way of presenting an authentic British-Caribbean identity in this poem
  • the poem explains how only British history and culture has been taught, so the speaker is 'checking out' Caribbean history for himself
  • there is a clear sense that the speaker's history and identity have been deliberately withheld from him, presented through the metaphors in the second stanza
  • agard describes the speaker…

Comments

Jericio

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very helpful :)

ImamahM

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Thx this is useful!