Immigrant Blues Themes
Language and Communication
Not only does "Immigrant Blues" talk about learning another language, but our speaker is also obsessed with going over different names or titles for aspects of the immigrant experience. The ways th...
Foreignness and 'The Other'
Throughout "Immigrant Blues," our speaker keeps naming and renaming the immigrant experience. He gives it a grand total of six titles, and the fact that no single name seems to quite capture it sug...
Identity
Most of "Immigrant Blues" involves exploring a series of identities. Our speaker brings up a number of titles for the story of immigrant experience, and each one is a different crack at defining th...
Death
There are only a couple times in "Immigrant Blues" when death is mentioned directly, but the sense of mortality and the need to survive underlie the poem in at least a couple ways. First, escaping...