The Immigrant's Song

“The Immigrant’s Song” is by Tishani Doshi—an award-winning poet, novelist, journalist, and dancer. Published in 2013, the poem explores sentiments of song and themes of immigration and silencing. Doshi—who was born in India and came to America to earn her college and graduate degrees—has felt firsthand how it feels to be an immigrant. In 2001, Doshi returned to India where she has remained since. Her writing explores Indian culture and is known for asking particularly tough questions about race, immigration, and gender. For instance, her 2017 collection, Girls Are Coming Out of the Woods, explores the female body and boundaries and violence of women in India.

“The Immigrant’s Song” is a cornerstone to Doshi’s poetic works. Serving as a voice for immigrants, it speaks volumes to the sentiments of being forced to leave one’s homeland and feeling unmoored in a new, strange land. Published in her 2013 collection, Everything Begins Elsewhere, “The Immigrant’s Song” represents an important voice for refugees and immigrants all around the world.

Poet Biography

Tishani Doshi (1975-) was born in Madras, India where she spent her early life raised by her Welsh mother and Gujarati father. Doshi moved to America and earned a BA from Queens College in North Carolina, where she studied Business Administration and Communications, followed by a master’s degree from the Writing Seminars at Johns Hopkins University. In 1999, Doshi moved to London where she spent many years working in the advertising department for the prominent fashion magazine Harper’s and Queen. Her life took a turn when she moved back to India in 2001 and met Chandralekha—a leading dance choreographer. Since then, Doshi has pursued a career in dance, performing internationally with the Chandralekha group.

Doshi is also an accomplished journalist, freelance writer, and creative writer. Her journalistic pieces have appeared in newspapers such as the Guardian and the Hindu. Her non-fiction has been shortlisted for the Outlook/Picador India Non-Fiction Competition, and her columns have been widely read by New Indian Express readers. As a poet, she’s published several collections of poetry—her first, Countries of the Body, in 2006. This collection launched Doshi’s poetic career, winning a Forward Prize for Best First Collection.

A writer deeply rooted in Indian society and culture, Doshi has written several novels exploring the myth and civilization of the region. Her first novel, The Pleasure Seekers (2010), was shortlisted for the Hindu Best Fiction Award; it was also longlisted for the Orange Prize for Fiction and the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award. Her latest collection of poems, published in 2017, is titled Girls Are Coming Out of the Woods.

A prominent writer with an important voice, Doshi’s essays, poems, and short stories have been widely anthologized. A recipient of the Eric Gregory Award for Poetry and winner of the All-India Poetry Competition, Doshi also represented India at a historic gathering for world poets in 2012 for Poetry Parnassus at the Southbank Centre in London.

When not traveling, Doshi lives in an Indian village by the sea in Tamil Nadu. Doshi currently serves as the Visiting Professor of Practice, Literature and Creative Writing at New York University, Abu Dhabi.

Poem Text

Doshi, Tishani. “The Immigrant's Song.” 2013. The Poetry Foundation.

Summary

Tishani Doshi’s “The Immigrant’s Song” examines the voice of the immigrant. Upon arriving in a new country, the poem explores the silencing immigrants often experience coming from a vastly different culture and world. Having experienced the immigrant’s sentiments firsthand, Doshi writes in this poem a lament-like song about how complicated it is to exist in a western country—like America—as an immigrant.

The poem also explores what immigrants leave behind—namely, their homeland, but also memories, traumas, and even dead loved ones. Serving as a guide for how to function as an immigrant, “The Immigrant’s Song” repeatedly tells of what not to speak about, what not to remember, and what to let go. At its core, Doshi’s poem explores themes of immigration and silencing, and what it means to leave the country of one’s birth for a new, strange country where the cultures and customs are markedly foreign.