How does the poet express the difficulties of being in a minority? :: English Literature

How does the poet express the difficulties of being in a minority?In the verse form hunting for my knife Bhatt has expressed how through herown somebodyal experience she has found learning a new style to bedifficult physically and emotionally. throughout the poem she hasconveyed how her mother language Gujarati slowly started to erode,as she took on her foreign tongue English. She shows this throughnot only the vocabulary of the poem but the social system etc too.The intention of the poem is to convey how although learning a newlanguage is extremely difficult, your mother tongue will alwaysremain an essential area of your identity. Bhatt is worried that sheis forgetting her mother tongue and that her second language willnever be as natural. At the start of the poem Bhatt uses a secondperson address and conversational language You ask me what I meanand rhetorical questions I ask you which makes it sound like she istalking to the reader about her job and asking them to empathise with her. When Bhatt says what would you do it suggests a level ofdetachment as does the absence of doublery in the opening lines. Thetone is sooner negative and quite depressing. She sounds as if she isin despair.Towards the middle of the poem she uses Gujarati to show us hermother tongue and emphasise its great difference from English. Inthe last part of the poem Bhatt uses metaphorical language, which ismore poetic than previously in the poem and very different to theconversational language at the start for example, she uses themetaphor of her mother tongue growing back as a flower.The structure of the poem is quite unusual due to it not being brokendown into regular and ceremonious stanzas. The form of the poemreminds the reader of how your language develops and grows over time.The first part of the poem explains the problem Bhatt has of beingfluent in two languages. She repeats tongue and uses the image ofhaving two tongues in your mouth to try to convey the difficulty ofit t o the reader. The next part of the poem explains how when she isasleep she dreams in her mother tongue, it is the middle of the poemand the vegetable marrow of the conflict she is experiencing as she feels she isnot content with either language and worries she may lose her IndianIdentity by taking on the second language as she is stuck betweencultures. In line 12 the mother tongue seems to take on physical