Views on Different Cultures Presented in Presents From My Aunts In Pakistan and Search For My Tongue

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Views on Different Cultures Presented in Presents From My Aunts In Pakistan and Search For My Tongue

For my essay I am going to compare 'Search For My Tongue' by Sujata

Bhatt and 'Presents From My Aunts In Pakistan' by Moniza Alvi.

'Presents from my Aunts in Pakistan' is autobiographical. It is set in

England where the author talks about and describes the presents that

she receives from her Aunts who live in Pakistan.

'Search for my Tongue' is written while living in Germany but during

her life Sujata Bhatt has had to speak three different languages.

These are: Gujarati, English and German. She writes how she feels at

the way that she has to lose or forget her original language which is

Gujarati and only speak the language of the country that she is living

in which is currently Germany and then she realises that although she

has to speak German on the streets she doesn't have to speak it at

home and she doesn't have to write or think in German. She realises

that not speaking a language does not mean that you have lost your

cultural identity.

In 'Search for my Tongue' I think that Sujata Bhatt does not like

having to belong to two cultures. The line ' if you lived in a place

you had to speak a foreign tongue' reinforces this point. The words

'had to' suggest the fact that she is being forced to speak German

when she really wants to speak Gujarati. This implies the fact that

she does not want to have to speak German but feels she has no other

choice and would much rather be speaking Gujarati. In saying she would

rather speak Gujarati also implies that she is not forgetting her

language deliberately, she does not want to forget it ...

... middle of paper ...

...t that she doesn't want to be part

of the culture that she is currently in and she misses her original

culture. The lines; 'Your mother tongue would rot, rot and die in your

mouth', shows how she misses her old culture and feels she is almost

being forced to forget it.

In 'Presents…' the line 'I could never be as lovely as those clothes,'

makes you realise that she thinks that the clothes and the culture are

both lovely and wonderful but she feels she would never fit in with

them.

Both of these poems are wonderful. They both portray a search for

cultural identity, and while one seems to find hers the other appears

to end her poem at a point where she is still at the beginning of her

quest. Overall my favourite poem is Presents from My Aunts in Pakistan

but I also really enjoyed reading 'Search for my tongue'.

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