Refugee Blues Poem

Both poems talk differently about how you can be prevented from having your an identity. In ‘Refugee Blues’, the refugees are prevented from getting their official identity, which provides them safety. People who live in the country, the government and in some cases the governments from their home country is preventing them from achieving safety and a sense of belonging in a country. Again, unlike an unknown girl, this poem is more of a life or death situation. They long more for an official identity rather than a personal one, while ‘An Unknown Girl’ is more about finding personal identity and it is not really a life or death situation. It is shown that they are being prevented from gaining an identity because of the people who live there in the poem where it says: ‘If we let them in, they will steal our daily bread…’ This shows that the people of the country are worried that these refugees will occupy their jobs, their

Also, ‘Refugee Blues’ is more about official identity while ‘An Unknown Girl’ is more about personal identity and the way she feels. I feel that the two poems are becoming increasingly relevant to today’s world because there are more and more refugees who are rejected from achieving a fresh start, away from the chaos they left behind. Also, ‘An Unknown Girl’ portrays a girl who moved from her original culture into a different culture but she doesn’t feel comfortable there. This is the case for many kids now because more and more people are moving to different countries. I feel like ‘Refugee Blues’ portrays the struggles with identity that people experience when they try to move somewhere else while ‘An Unknown Girl’ portrays the struggles with identity people experience after they move there. In the social jungle of human existence, there is no feeling of being alive without a sense of identity- Erika