The poem, “They’ll say: she must be from another country”, is about how a

person is unable to fit in with the rest of the society that she is living in at that
point in time. There is much dissent that is clear from close reading of the poem.
Close analysis of the poets background shows us why. She was born in India
and divides her time between India and England. She is one of the most
important Indian poets currently writing in English. A recurring theme in theme in
her poetry is the danger of exclusion. The persona is clearly an immigrant from
India, and is probably someone from the villages. Vivid descriptions like “when I
pee in the vineyard as if it were Bombay”, show what kind of life that the persona
is accustomed to and the type of life in Britain is more “civilized” and there is the
culture shock that the persona encounters. I think that when Dharker wrote this
poem she was trying to show the large and possibly unbridgeable gaps in the
cultures, behavior and the lifestyles of the immigrants and the native of
Britain.She shows this through the different speaking styles of both groups.
“vowel sounds are off
when the consonants are hard
and they should be soft,”
This quote shows us that the British speak english. I think that the poet shows
these kinds of simple differences to enhance the effect that the poem gives us
that these differences might not be reconciled.

The poem clearly states that for all the prejudice that they encounter, they don’t
feel so bad that they are not welcomed as the persona feels that there it is not a
country and there is more flaws than the inhabitant care to admit. I think that this
poem is a social commentary of the life and culture of Britain in the mid 80s. It
talks of “ cracks that grow between borders” she may have been referring to the
north south divide. There are many allusions to the Britain of the time. There is
also a mocking of sorts of the stiff upper lip type of society that Britain had. Opera
for instance is meant to make the audiences cry; or at least be serious. The
persona simply yawns and this shows that the persona finds them pretentious.
The fact that they find the persona’s uncouth behavior of eating up the olives and
spitting out the pits shows that they are very civilized people and cannot accept
such behavior and hence they proclaim that such people are “from another
country.

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