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The Deliverer - Tishani Doshi - Coggle Diagram
The Deliverer - Tishani Doshi
Motherhood
The title being, 'The Deliverer' has a double meaning in that the Indian mother is literally the deliverer of the child at home and then a deliverer to American parents
'This is the one my mother will bring,' the juxtaposition between the Indian mother and the American mother lay in the intention, there's almost a use of prophetic language 'will bring' that insinuates there is a kind of intentional fate about the baby being picked
Motherhood is also to an extent displayed as a kind of transaction or commodity, with the speaker observing through 'video tapes' 'how she passed from woman to woman'
The child is delivered almost like a parcel
There is also a divide between the ceremonious, emotional treatment of pregnancy and motherhood in the US versus the unceremonious and mechanic sense of motherhood in India
'Feel for penis or no penis, toss the baby to the heap of others, trudge home to lie down for their men again'
There is a kind of mechanic screening of the children and then a mechanic but reluctant 'trudging' home to conceive again. In India, motherhood is the expected role for women, with men being the higher authority.
There is no emphasis on the Westernised 'miracle of birth' in the poem
Gender discrimination and infanticide
'Because they were crippled or dark or girls'
Use of syndetic listing places emphasis on the strict criteria that babies but particularly girl babies are forced into due to the poverty of the mothers or the large population
'Feel for penis or no penis, toss the baby to the heap of others, trudge home to lie down for their men again'
Poverty
India is the most populous country in the world, meaning that wealth inequality can be very stark
Culture differences
There is kind of a white saviour idea threaded throughout the poem, indeed the American parents know 'about doing things right' whilst in India the baby was brought up in 'twilight corners'
The speaker has even her Indian infancy westernised, 'this girl grows up on video tapes,' a use of metaphor to represent the disconnect between the speaker and India
The convent that the girl is originally kept in, is the 'Our Lady of the Light Convent, Kerala'
The poem begins with this setting, which foreshadows and juxtaposes (or creates an overt divide between) the American setting 'Milwakee Airport USA.' Additionally, the fact that the poem begins with the setting places emphasis on the colonial element of the Convent. The convent is a Catholic convent in India, as opposed to the majority Hindu or Bhuddist population
Girl babies particularly are unwanted and 'stuffed in bags' where their physical suffocation mirror the societal oppression they experience
Structure: Primarily 3 line free verse stanzas (save for some single lines for effect)