Summary Of Crossing The Border By Joy Harjo

463 Words2 Pages

An important tool in the English language is imagery. Imagery is words that describe something, which you imagine it in your head, hence the name imagery. It is most likely used by your favorite songwriter or book writer. From Wiz Khalifa to Shakespeare, imagery will always be an important tool. Now, the use of imagery in Joy Harjo’s poem “Crossing the Border”, she describes about America, the escaping family in the poem, and racism. In “Crossing the Border”, its plot takes place in America going into Canada, but it does not directly say that. At the beginning of the poem, we read that the family of the story is “coming out into the Canada side”. This infers that the families are coming out of some state in the United States and are headed to Canada's border. Also another fact is that, the story states that they should head to Milwaukee, and of course Milwaukee is located in the United States. Ultimately at the end of the poem, the family was able to cross the border into Canada, but they say “Lights and businesses we drive towards could be America, too, following us into the north”. In this quote you could see the usage of the word “following” as it means pursue, but of course, if something were to follow you, it would be behind you. In this case it would be America. …show more content…

One of them is how the border guard says, “Who are you Indians”. This is supported by the fact that the driver in the car is talking in broken English to the guard but not his family. In the poem it’s said that the driver, which is a dad, talks only broken English to white people, so this sates he is not white. Near the end of the poem, the guard says, “Indians in a Indian car trying to find a Delaware Powwow”. This quote also visualizes the difference from culture of the family. The quote also mentions racism coming from the