The Emigree: she knows the country may be gone, and keeps the sunlight anyway

Is Istanbul the same city as Constantinople? It sounds like two places, one built after the other. It is one city, on the same stretch of water. The official name changed in the twentieth century; the streets did not. A place can be renamed, taken over or lost, and stay exactly the same in someone's memory. Carol Rumens's The Emigree goes one step further. Its speaker never gives her city a name at all. She knows the country may be at war, may be run by tyrants, may not exist the way she remembers it, and she keeps the sunlight anyway. Why she holds on, knowing all that, is the question the last line answers.

The Emigree is still in copyright, so this video quotes short pieces of it; have the anthology open if you can. An emigree is someone who has left her own country to live in another. It opens like a fairy tale: "There once was a country ... I left it as a child". Once upon a time warns you straight away that this country is a memory, not a place you could visit. She admits the worst herself: "It may be at war, it may be sick with tyrants". A tyrant is a cruel ruler with total power. And then: "I am branded by an impression of sunlight". The bright memory is not something she looks at. It is a mark on her. What does branded suggest that remembered would not: choice, permanence, or doubt? Permanence. A brand is burned into the skin, and it marks who owns you, so the memory was done to her, and it will not come off.

Sunlight is the poem's motif, an image that keeps coming back, and each of the three verses ends on that one word. In the second verse, borders rise between her and the city, and she admits her memory might be false by now, even forbidden by the government. She still cannot stop speaking the language she learned there, and it tastes of sunlight to her. In the third verse, she has no passport and no way back. So the city comes to her instead, and she treats it like a child or a friend, combing its hair and going dancing with it. Giving a place human actions like that is personification. The city becomes someone she looks after, not somewhere she has lost. But the new place turns on her: "They accuse me of being dark in their free city." The city that calls itself free is the one doing the accusing. And the poem ends: "They mutter death, and my shadow falls as evidence of sunlight." Why does a shadow count as evidence of sunlight? Because a shadow only exists where there is a light behind you. Every time they threaten her, her shadow proves the sunlight is still there.

So saying the worst out loud is part of the point. Holding the memory against the facts is the poem's argument: what a state can take is a place, and what it cannot take is what she remembers it as. By the last line, her shadow is evidence, not a threat.

You may be tempted to guess which real country she means. The poem refuses to name it, and that refusal is a choice you can write about: an unnamed city could be anyone's lost home.

Five short pieces of The Emigree carry an exam answer, and each has a job. "There once was a country ... I left it as a child": a fairy-tale opening, so the country is a memory, not a place. "I am branded by an impression of sunlight": branded is a burn and a mark of ownership, so the memory is done to her. "It may be at war, it may be sick with tyrants": she knows the truth and keeps the memory, which is a choice, not ignorance. "They accuse me of being dark in their free city": the place that calls itself free is the one excluding her. And the shadow that falls "as evidence of sunlight": the last line turns the threat into proof for her. In the cluster, The Emigree answers identity and belonging, and the tyrants and the accusing city let it reach power too.

Here is the check: three lines, each missing one word, then one to match. I am what by an impression of sunlight? Branded. Branded by sunlight means burned in, and owned. Now the new home: they accuse me of being dark in their free what? City. Their free city, which is not free for her. Try the ending: my shadow falls as evidence of what? Sunlight. The shadow proves the light behind her is still there. One more: someone says, they can take my house, but not my memory of it. Which line matches? Branded by an impression of sunlight fits best: the memory is burned into her, so nobody can take it, whatever happens to the place. Istanbul kept its streets when its name changed. Rumens's speaker keeps her city with no name at all, and her shadow proves it.

If branded versus remembered makes sense to you, you can explain it to a friend, so award it the thumb. Otherwise hold onto it, because the identity and belonging video sets this poem beside Agard's.

Next in the chapter: Power: who has it, and how long it lasts. Hopefully that's next in your feed, but if not, search for ScholaFly E L four oh, seventeen.

Every other video is on scholafly.com too, easy to search by video code or by keyword. Whatever you're revising, go there and have a look, or, watch the next video.