Analysis of Grace Nicholls' poem "Childhood".

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English Essay

Analysis of Grace Nicholls’ poem “Childhood”

        Grace Nicholls was born in Georgetown, Guyana in 1950 and educated at St. Stephen’s Scots School, PPI High School, and the University of Guyana.  She worked as a teacher, freelance journalist and Guyanese Government employee before moving to Britain in 1977.  She is regarded as the most authoritative voice among contemporary black women poets in Britain.  “The Fat Black Woman’s Poems’” which she wrote in 1984 uses humour to deconstruct a racial and sexual stereotypes, this poetry collection is where the poem which I am going to analyse “Childhood” came from.

        Childhood is about the poet reminiscing about her childhood in her home country, she is telling us about the community she lived in and the fishing industry that she was involved in.  How they killed the fish and how her religious background has affected her life in her new country.  She is telling us one of her childhood stories.

        The theme of this poem is of a culture clash between the ‘easy’ life of the British and the ‘hard-working’ life of the Caribbean , the poet is trying to set a theme of how people in Britain do not have to catch there own food and the way they catch fish is a lot harder.  She may not like this country because it is so different to hers, like ‘at Sunday school’ in this country most people work on a Sunday and it is supposed to be a day of rest and it may have come as a shock to her when she came to this country.  Another poem which deals with culture clashes is “Fear”, which is about racial tension between Caribbean and British cultures which is the theme here but it is not as strong in the childhood poem.

        She may have been forced to eat the fish so this may be a sad memory from her childhood and she is comparing it to life in the new country that she live in and this has brought back memories of the fish when people don’t pray for there food in this country, this is again part of the culture clash that she writes about.  ”watershed of sunlight” shows that Nichols is missing the Caribbean she repeats this theme in many of her poems including “Island Man” and “Two Old Men on a…….”

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        Grace Nichols seems quite angry in this poem about the fish dying or maybe the people in this country.  “the fishes before a drought” she may be angry at God for giving them droughts and letting the fish die and the drought implies that her life is not perfect so she maybe angry with some British people who are not grateful for the easy life they have compared to other countries like her homeland.

        “floundering at our back doors” the fish may have been on dry land because there was no water and the poet may have seen these fish ...

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