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No one leaves home warsan shire citation12/29/2023 Central American refugees on "La Bestia" can be killed during the train's passage, and women are often raped or murdered on the route. A train called "La Bestia" is the method of transport for many of these refugees, most fleeing gang violence. It then describes passage by train, such as the passage taken by many Central American migrants as they try to make their way to the U.S.-Mexico border. It describes passage by sea-a dangerous route that many migrants from Middle Eastern countries take, which often leads to their deaths at sea and if they do wash up at shore, they can be kept in limbo for years at horrifically overcrowded refugee camps. The next stanza also describes images from refugee journeys. Many refugees have to acquire false papers in order to enter new countries, then have to re-construct their identities through immigration procedures in order to apply for asylum. It then follows the narrator as she escapes, tearing up her passport, thus essentially erasing her identity and her connection to her home. It describes traumatic memories-being held at knifepoint and given death threats, feeling fire and destruction overtake the city that was once your home. The third stanza goes more into detail about the passage to wherever the speaker is going. Shire seems to be suggesting that violence destroys youth, forcing children to grow up far too quickly. This explores a loss of innocence, ushered in far too soon. The poem's first section describes whole cities emptying overnight and youth being corrupted by war and violence the speaker, settling into one solid identity for a moment, remembers a kiss with a boy who now holds a gun. Sometimes, this "you" seems to be one singular person at others, the "you" is many different stories, all splitting at the seams as the migrants go through different traumas at other times "you" is the reader of the poem. The poem begins with a statement, at once a metaphor and a kind of argument: "no one leaves home unless / home is the mouth of a shark." It addresses one or many refugees as "you," describing refugees fleeing their homes through fragmented glimpses of different narratives. It argues that refugees truly do not have any choice but to flee, and that to send them back home or forbid them from taking refuge would be an extreme human rights violation. It expresses a strong counterargument to common perceptions that refugees try to settle in countries like Europe and America to take advantage of their resources. Finally, Shire ends the poem where it begins-referring to "home" as a being with the ability to speak and feel, and exploring the disjointedness that the character she is addressing experiences on her flight away from home. But the poem also emphasizes the fact that things are inevitably worse at home, where there is so much unspeakable violence. Once they/"you" arrive, however, the struggle is not over-the writer describes the experience of prejudice that haunts migrants once they arrive at their destinations. It then follows the migrants on their journeys, via land, sea, train, and other methods of transportation, to a new, safer place. It addresses one migrant specifically as "you," but takes fragments of different refugee stories and threads them together, beginning with the initial flight from home. "Home" is a poem about the refugee experience.
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