“Home” is a poem about migration, and the traumas and complexities that define it. It explores the forces that drive people to leave their homes—forces that are often deeply misconstrued and misunderstood. It explores the pain that defines many migrant experiences. It also explores the ways that migrants are received in the countries in which they are seeking refuge.
In the first four stanzas, the speaker details the violence and trauma that often lead migrants to leave their homes, making it clear that migration is not a choice for the migrants who flee war-torn countries.
In stanza five, the speaker begins to address the reader, urging them to understand that no one would flee their home and put themselves as well as their family into the dangerous and humiliating situation of becoming a refugee unless the alternative was far worse.
The speaker then goes on to describe the cruel and harrowing experience of escaping and traveling to a seemingly safer place, only to be welcomed with hatred, bigotry, and ignorance. Through brutal, unflinching vignettes that describe the horrors of bigotry but that also explain that going home is impossible, the narrator begins to outline the complexity and darkness that shapes many migrant experiences, leaving them without any safe place to call home.
In stanza nine, the speaker begins to look to the future, stating that only her wish to survive is driving her onwards. In the last two stanzas, the speaker repeats the sentiment that no one would leave their home unless home itself drove them away.
