What Were They Like?

Look at this site for comparison suggestions and in-depth analysis of the poem....
http://www.boardthebard.com/attachments/1578.pdf

The poet uses simple questions and answers to describe what happened to the people and culture of Vietnam during the Vietnam War. The horror of what happened is understated, the person replying to the questions always polite, always addressing the questioner as "Sir", while describing the horrors of the war, "there was time only to scream", in contrast to what had gone before, "when peaceful clouds were reflected in the paddies".


One group of students performed this poem as if the questioner was a torturer/interrogator, and the person replying a victim. That brought out the hidden violence in the poem very well.
You only have to look at the picture here - Vietnamese children running from an airborne attack - to see the truth underlying the matter of fact tone of the poem.

Search for my tongue

This poem can be linked to any of the Different Cultures anthology poems which deal with language, but it's also about losing one's culture, so it can be compared to the poems about that.

I've never been able to speak two or more languages fluently, so it's hard for me to imagine how the poet must feel, but her image of having "two tongues in your mouth", her metaphor for speaking two languages, conjures up something from a horror film.

Moreover, instead of saying that she might forget how to speak her mother tongue (gujerati), she says it might "rot and die" in her mouth. Again, this suggests a horror film to me - imagine having your tongue rotting away!

A good site for revising this poem is:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/gcsebitesize/english/poemscult/searchrev1.shtml