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Can you help interpret Allison Joseph's poem "On Being Told I Don't Speak Like a Black Person"?

"Let us speak. Let us talk
with the sounds of our mothers
and fathers still reverberating
in our minds, wherever our mothers
or fathers come from: Arkansas, Belize, Alabama,
Brazil, Aruba, Arizona.
Let us simply speak
to one another,
listen and prize the inflections,
differences, never assuming
how any person will sound
until her mouth opens,
until his mouth opens,
greetings familiar
in any language."

Quick answer:

The speaker's tone seems to change as the poem progresses, moving from a humorous description of her mother to a more impassioned plea for people to celebrate their individuality and not judge others according to how they speak.

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This poem is about how someone's manner of speaking is tied inextricably with their identity. The speaker begins by writing about her mother who, despite being told by teachers to speak in a British way "like Eliza Doolittle," retained her Jamaican accent and the lilt and music in her voice that everyone loved. The speaker seems to admire her mother for retaining her accent, and thus not molding her voice or her identity according to "fastidious British mannerisms."

In the second part of the poem, the speaker describes how her own voice doesn't fit into any easily recognizable categories. She doesn't sound "like a Black American" and her voice doesn't have any "grating New York nasality." Her friends ask her why she doesn't sound like her mother or like "what a black person is supposed to sound like." The poet speculates that perhaps she doesn't sound like what people stereotypically...

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expect a black person to sound like because she uses words "too erudite, too scholarly" for these stereotypes.

In the second stanza of the poem, the speaker says that "there's nothing more personal than speech," the implication being that it is wrong to expect someone to speak in a certain way just because of the race or ethnicity that they might belong to. These expectations can be limiting and can push an individual to dilute their individuality in order to fit more easily into a category or stereotype. The speaker then pleads with everyone who might hold stereotypical ideas as to how certain people should speak to forget these ideas and to "Let us speak . . . simply speak to one another."

At the end of the poem, the speaker goes further and insists that we shouldn't only accept the way someone speaks, but we should also "prize" and celebrate the individual "inflections" and differences of speech. We should celebrate these differences because they are expressions of personalities and of individuality.

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Allison Joseph's poem is about how personal each person's way of speaking is, and how people's speech comes about from their experiences and their parents' experiences. Therefore, there is no one right way for anyone to speak, and stating that someone should speak a certain way because of their race or what Joseph calls their "natural tan" is simplistic.

Joseph starts with the story of her mother, who grew up with a charming Jamaican accent, though her school teachers tried to get her to speak English with a British accent. This story has some irony in it, as later, when her mother came to the United States, everyone loved her accent and asked Joseph why she didn't have the same accent. Her mother's story shows how arbitrary people's feelings about accents and speech patterns are. The poet also shows that accents can be faked or manufactured, such as the "fastidious British mannerisms" that her father put on to sell people things. In college, Joseph was asked why she didn't speak "like a Black American," and she questioned people who asked what exactly that meant. In the end, she realizes "there's nothing more personal than speech." People speak in idiosyncratic ways because of the way their parents spoke and the way they were raised, and they should be allowed to express themselves freely without other people making assumptions about them. This is the richness that comes from appreciating the vastness of individual experience. 

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This poem is stating that it is okay to speak the way your mother or father taught you to speak. The poet is offended when others ask her about her speech sounds or dialect. Joseph considers it rude to negatively judge the way someone speaks.

The poet states that we should prize differences in speaking habits. We should appreciate differences. We should not judge people by the way they speak. We should never assume anything, but we should be open-minded enough to recognize distinctions in speech as delightful sounds. We should feel comfortable enough to speak the way we speak and to speak with pride. We should be deliberate in our speech habits. Dialectal differences should be admired by all.

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