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Living in Exile: The Two Poems

Writer's picture: Reid MontgomeryReid Montgomery

Kirkland, David E. “‘The Rose That Grew from Concrete’: Postmodern Blackness and New English Education.” The English Journal, vol. 97, no. 5, 2008, pp. 69–75, https://doi.org/10.2307/30046887.


Post Modern Blackness and New English Education is an extensive study on Tupac’s poem, The Rose That Grew From Concrete. David E. Kirkland is an associate professor of English and urban education at NYU Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development and is widely praised for his knowledge, reliability, and sincerity. David E. Kirkland, goes in-depth about due to the past historical events racism is present in our system still to date, we wonder why black populations have low income when they weren’t given the proper infrastructure to maintain growing communities in the first place, almost like living in a state of exile.


They, like so many other urban youth are classified as “struggling” or “striving”, were supposed tobe drifters, barely literate, straddling the frontiers of failure. Yet for three years, I documented the ways that literacy dramatically and dynamically unfold their lives I hed my breathe as all of them fought through labels of low literacy or worse, or worse ‘troubled’ behaviour. (Kirkland, 69)


Bewell, Alan. “John Clare and the Ghosts of Natures Past.” Nineteenth-Century Literature, vol. 65, no. 4, 2011, pp. 548–78, https://doi.org/10.1525/ncl.2011.65.4.548.


John Clare and The Ghost of Natures Past is a study of John Clare’s poem. It examines a variety of mental illnesses such as depression and loneliness that particularly create a feeling of exile. Alan Bewell is a very reputable English Professor at the University of Toronto, where his primary interest is British romanticism, along with an additional interest in literature and colonialism. Bewell discusses how Clarke endured feelings like depression and loneliness made him feel as though he was living in exile his entire life, similar to black-based communities feeling as though they can’t make a better life for themselves due to exile from improper community infrastructure from the government.

“John Clare came to the stark realization that, although he had been a resident of England all his life, he was now living in a state of exile.” (Bewell, 548)


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