Tobacco And Curry Leaves: Poem Analysis

If fifty people were put into the same room and made to experience the same thing, every person would have a different story. The things that are endured shape the characters, but how they choose to cope with what is handed to them, shapes them even more. The characters featured the most in Storming Heaven are going through rough things, but each character is different. The two poems that were selected were A Place with Promise and Tobacco and Curry Leaves, both of these show how a place can shape a person. The environment that the characters are in contribute to how they act, how they live, and the type of people they are around. A Place with Promise is a cultural poem about a girl who doesn’t want to stay, but can not leave. In the poem, the author is trying to project how the environment we live in is being treated. A line in the poem states, “The nettle-tangled orchards given up on, the broken fence post with their tags of wire, burdock taking over the uncut fields, the rusted

The man that is mentioned in this poem talks about his travels and what he has experienced. He talks about the vast differences, and how he feels. He has seen many different things, and that has helped him have more options for who he wanted to be. Growing up, he lived in West Virginia, but he was not from there. His mother is Asian, and his father is Indian. He is very well rounded and he notices the many different things that go into personality. Traveling all across the world, he sees all the different religions, lifestyles, and people. In the fourth stanza of the poem, he describes the two parts of him. This stanza is where you see the vast majority of the change. He mentions one thing that he was expected to be and one thing that he adopted from his culture. The place where he had grown up had caused him to have cultural appreciation, and his heritage had cause him to want to travel and see where he had come