Our society is still filled with issues that have yet been uncovered. Though the time periods have change, the world still has not resolved all the issues that are still present from the past. In the two poems, “On Being Told I Don’t Speak Like a Black Person” written by Allison Joseph, the author shows how racial issues have still yet erased in our world today. In the poem, the author is faced with the issue of people criticing the way she talks. Just because she was black they assumed that she would sound uneducated. Throughout the text, it allows the reader to be aware of how segregation still plays apart in some people’s lives. This essay will further discuss two themes that were evident in this poem which are racial issues and the struggle to seeks one identity.
The poem, “On Being Told I Don’t Speak Like a Black Person” conveys to the reader that it’s okay to speak the way your mother or father has taught you to speak. From the beginning of the poem, the author talks about how
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Allison’s friends could not quite understand why Allison did not have either her mother’s Jamaican accent or her father’s English accent, but they admired her mother’s voice. Allison stated “And I don’t sound like a Black American, college acquaintances observed, sure they knew what a Black person was supposed to sound like” (Gardner 701). Just because she looked African American, they automatically assumed the she would sound the same as an uneducated black person. The narrator finds it very rude for someone to criticize the way she speaks and pronounces her words. The poet becomes offended when others would ask why she talked the way she did with her sound of speech and dialect. Allison sees herself as being normal, however according to others who surround her thinks differently. Her feelings’ of frustration came from her not understanding the reason why people could not accept her for the way she