Idioms of Migration Narratives in Selected Poems of Niyi Osundare
Loading...
Date
2025
Authors
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Abstract
Immigration and Diaspora have become global issues of concern in our contemporary times, engendering almost equal media and scholarly attention and focus. Scholars have regularly looked at impacts of different forms of relocation on individuals and by extension, a nation. Regardless of possible underlying sense of excitement, the prospects of leaving familiar terrain for strange lands abroad, often render sojourners vulnerable. As a result, the nature of encounters at the first points of entry often add to a prospective migrant’s anxieties.
This paper explores experiences, couched as idioms and metaphors through varied immigration experiences in four poems selected from by Niyi Osundare’s Waiting Laughters (2002), “Entry Point Encounter”, “Waiting for the Anxious Fumes”, and “Feathered Heels”, and “If Only the Road Could Talk” in If Only the Road Could Talk (2017). In the poems, the poet highlights immigrants’ unpleasant and sometimes comic experiences with border officers, using the poetic diction of sarcasm, but that is both idiomatic and metaphorical, thereby deflecting what may have appeared to be sharp criticism of migrant treatment at entry.
Adopting Postcolonial theory as framework, the paper explores diaspora realities such as identity, race issues, and power dynamics, and how they interconnect.
The paper concludes that non-white migrants are often subjected to racial profiling, psychological trauma, as well as to deliberate disrespect using preconceived biases, while lawfully exercising their rights to free movement as free citizens of the earth.