September 30, 2025 - English Studies

“A Cyborg’s Father” by Dave Brennan: Summary and Critique

“A Cyborg’s Father” by Dave Brennan first appeared in A Cyborg’s Father: Misreading Donna Haraway (2025), published by Punctum Books (Chapter: “A Cyborg’s Father”

Introduction: “A Cyborg’s Father” by Dave Brennan

“A Cyborg’s Father” by Dave Brennan first appeared in A Cyborg’s Father: Misreading Donna Haraway (2025), published by Punctum Books (Chapter: “A Cyborg’s Father.” In this chapter, Brennan weaves a deeply personal narrative of parenting a young child with type 1 diabetes through the lens of Donna Haraway’s cyborg theory. His daughter Syl, whose survival is mediated by continuous glucose monitors, insulin pumps, and digital data streams, becomes a living embodiment of the cyborg, while Brennan himself, constantly monitoring and adjusting her devices, assumes the role of an “operating system” or “pancreas” (Brennan, 2025). This intimate portrait reframes Haraway’s theoretical cyborg as not just a posthuman metaphor but an everyday lived reality of vulnerability, interdependence, and care. Brennan highlights the tension between autonomy and medical surveillance, human error and machine precision, underscoring how technology both sustains and alienates (“Knowledge is assurance. Data is assurance.”). Within literary and cultural theory, this chapter is significant for its reorientation of the cyborg from an abstract postmodern symbol to a relational, embodied experience, offering a powerful critique of medical institutions and a reconceptualization of caregiving as a form of cyborgian labor. It enriches debates in posthumanism and affect theory by foregrounding the ethics of intimacy, dependence, and machine-human co-constitution (Brennan, 2025).

Summary of “A Cyborg’s Father” by Dave Brennan

🔧 Cyborgian Parenthood

Brennan frames his daughter Syl, diagnosed with type 1 diabetes at two-and-a-half, as a living cyborg—her survival tied to continuous glucose monitors (CGM) and insulin pumps.
He writes: “If my daughter is part machine I am by extension a part of that machine. The cyborg’s father is also cyborg. I am an operating system. I am a pancreas” (Brennan, 2025).

Fatherhood becomes not just care, but technological co-functioning.

📊 Data, Surveillance, and Assurance

Blood sugar data becomes a constant stream that structures intimacy and parental vigilance.
“Knowledge is assurance. Data is assurance” (Brennan, 2025).
The absence of CGM in the hospital feels like loss of connection, showing how technology mediates love and trust.

🏥 Medical Institutions and Alienation

Brennan critiques hospital protocols that remove CGM devices, alienating parents from their child’s care.

He observes: “In treating our daughter the hospital stripped us of connection, stripped away our intimacy, left us untethered” (Brennan, 2025).
The hospital symbolizes an impersonal machine that contrasts with the familial cyborg system at home.

😰 Error, Anxiety, and Human Limits

Brennan reflects on the father as a fallible “operating system,” plagued by exhaustion and error.

He admits: “He understands that machines do not worry. He attempts to delete worry from his files. Deletion fails” (Brennan, 2025).
Anxiety becomes the human remainder in a cyborgian network where machines cannot feel.

🏠 Dreams, Architecture, and Futurity

Brennan dreams of structures in which his daughter must live—a metaphor for chronic illness and technological embodiment.

“Inside this house where she must live. Because that is a part of the dream, too—the knowledge that this is a house she can never leave” (Brennan, 2025).
The question becomes how to turn this “house” into armor, strength, and even resistance.

📚 Literary and Theoretical Significance

Reinterprets Donna Haraway’s cyborg not as abstract metaphor but embodied reality of illness, care, and technology.

Moves cyborg theory into lived, affective, and ethical domains of family life.
Shows how posthumanism and affect theory intersect in everyday caregiving.

Theoretical Terms/Concepts in “A Cyborg’s Father” by Dave Brennan

🌸 Theoretical Term / Concept	✨ Example from Text	🌿 Explanation
🤖 Cyborg Identity	“If my daughter is part machine I am by extension a part of that machine. The cyborg’s father is also cyborg. I am an operating system. I am a pancreas.” (Brennan, 2025)	Illustrates Haraway’s notion of the cyborg as a hybrid being of human and machine. Brennan extends it to parenting, where his own identity fuses with technological caregiving.
📡 Posthuman Intimacy	“Knowledge is assurance. Data is assurance.” (Brennan, 2025)	Love and intimacy are mediated through data streams. The affective bond between father and daughter is expressed in technological monitoring, highlighting posthuman redefinitions of care.
🏥 Biopolitics & Medical Surveillance	“In treating our daughter the hospital stripped us of connection, stripped away our intimacy, left us untethered.” (Brennan, 2025)	The medical institution exerts control over bodies, undermining parental autonomy. Brennan critiques how surveillance and protocols depersonalize care.
🌀 Human Error vs. Machine Precision	“He understands that machines do not worry. He attempts to delete worry from his files. Deletion fails.” (Brennan, 2025)	Exposes the limits of machinic precision: humans are fallible, anxious, and emotional, while machines remain calculative. This tension underscores the vulnerability of cyborg existence.
🏠 Metaphor of Architecture	“Inside this house where she must live… the knowledge that this is a house she can never leave.” (Brennan, 2025)	Chronic illness and technological embodiment are represented as inhabiting a permanent architectural structure. It signifies both confinement and the possibility of transforming limitation into strength.
💞 Care as Cyborgian Labor	Continuous glucose checks, insulin adjustments, and sleepless monitoring described as routines.	Caregiving becomes an embodied extension of technological systems. Brennan reframes fatherhood as cyborgian labor, merging affect with machinic repetition.
🌍 Posthuman Ethics	The longing to make Syl’s condition “her strength, her armor, her insurrection.” (Brennan, 2025)	Moves cyborg theory into ethical territory: how to reframe technological dependency not as limitation but as empowerment and resistance.

Contribution of “A Cyborg’s Father” by Dave Brennan to Literary Theory/Theories

🌸 Posthumanism

Brennan embodies Haraway’s cyborg not as an abstract metaphor but as lived reality:
“If my daughter is part machine I am by extension a part of that machine. The cyborg’s father is also cyborg. I am an operating system. I am a pancreas.” (Brennan, 2025).

The narrative advances posthumanism by showing how humans and machines merge through necessity, care, and survival, challenging boundaries of selfhood.

✨ Cyborg Theory (Donna Haraway)

Extends Haraway’s Cyborg Manifesto into familial and medical contexts, where the cyborg is a child with type 1 diabetes.
Brennan redefines the cyborg as a relational identity:
“Knowledge is assurance. Data is assurance.” (Brennan, 2025).

This shifts cyborg discourse from feminist/postmodern metaphor toward intimate realities of care, anxiety, and dependency.

🌿 Affect Theory

Emotional and embodied responses become central in Brennan’s narrative: worry, fear, and love are mediated by machines.
“He understands that machines do not worry. He attempts to delete worry from his files. Deletion fails.” (Brennan, 2025).

By foregrounding affect, Brennan contributes to theories that emphasize the circulation of emotion within technological and human networks.

🌺 Biopolitics (Foucault)

The hospital setting becomes a site of institutional control, illustrating medical surveillance over individual bodies.
“In treating our daughter the hospital stripped us of connection, stripped away our intimacy, left us untethered.” (Brennan, 2025).

Contributes to biopolitical theory by showing how health systems regulate and alienate, contrasting institutional authority with parental/technological intimacy.

🌼 Narratology and Auto-Theory

Brennan’s personal narrative blends memoir with theoretical reflection, creating a hybrid “auto-theory” form.
The use of fragmented prose and machine-like repetition (“Run script. Request timeout. Kill process.”) mirrors the cyborg condition, contributing to experimental literary forms.

🌹 Ethics of Care

Brennan reconceptualizes caregiving as cyborgian labor—continuous, machinic, yet rooted in love.
“The shifting numbers on the display: he understands them as a form of normal love.” (Brennan, 2025).
This positions care not only as emotional but as technologically mediated, expanding ethical debates in literature around dependency, vulnerability, and relationality.

Examples of Critiques Through “A Cyborg’s Father” by Dave Brennan

🌸 Literary Work	✨ Critique Through A Cyborg’s Father	🌿 Reference & Quotation (Brennan, 2025)
🤖 *Donna Haraway, A Cyborg Manifesto* (1985)**	Brennan grounds Haraway’s abstract, political cyborg in lived fatherhood and medical care. He critiques the manifesto’s theoretical abstraction by showing the cyborg as a fragile, dependent child bound to machines.	“If my daughter is part machine I am by extension a part of that machine. The cyborg’s father is also cyborg.”
🏥 *Mary Shelley, Frankenstein* (1818)**	Where Shelley portrays creation as monstrous estrangement, Brennan reframes technological-human fusion as intimacy and survival. His “pancreatic fatherhood” critiques Frankenstein’s failure of care by reimagining cyborg creation as love-driven rather than hubris-driven.	“The shifting numbers on the display: he understands them as a form of normal love.”
🌼 *George Orwell, 1984* (1949)**	Orwell’s dystopia critiques surveillance as oppression. Brennan complicates this by showing how surveillance (CGM data, alarms) can be love and necessity. It critiques Orwell’s binary by proposing a cyborgian intimacy in which monitoring is both control and care.	“Knowledge is assurance. Data is assurance.”
🌹 *Franz Kafka, The Metamorphosis* (1915)**	Kafka depicts Gregor Samsa’s transformation as alienation and burden. Brennan critiques this framing by presenting his daughter’s “cyborg condition” not as dehumanization but as a possibility for strength and resistance, though still confined by structures.	“Inside this house where she must live… how might we make it her strength, her armor, her insurrection?”

Criticism Against “A Cyborg’s Father” by Dave Brennan

🌸 Over-Reliance on Personal Narrative

While powerful, the text’s autobiographical style may limit its theoretical generalizability.
Critics might argue that the emotional weight of fatherhood overshadows broader analytical rigor.

✨ Narrow Scope of Cyborg Theory

Brennan focuses almost exclusively on medicalized cyborg identity (child with diabetes + father-caregiver).

This may reduce Haraway’s wider feminist, political, and techno-cultural implications to a singular medical-family context.

🌿 Potential Romanticization of Technology

By framing data streams as love (“Knowledge is assurance. Data is assurance”), Brennan risks idealizing technological surveillance.
Critics might argue this overlooks darker implications of medical surveillance and systemic inequalities.

🌼 Institutional Critique but Limited Structural Analysis

Brennan critiques hospitals for alienating patients (“the hospital stripped us of connection”), yet offers little systemic analysis of healthcare power structures, neoliberal bio-economies, or accessibility issues.
The focus remains on personal frustration rather than policy critique.

🌺 Gendered Gaps in Caregiving Narrative

While Brennan emphasizes paternal care, critics could note the relative silence on maternal roles or broader family dynamics.

The narrative risks centering fatherhood as unique when caregiving labor has historically been feminized.

🌹 Fragmented Prose as a Limitation

Brennan’s experimental, code-like prose (“Run script. Kill process. Request timeout.”) mirrors cyborg breakdown, but may alienate readers seeking clarity.
Some may see this style as performative rather than analytically substantive.

Representative Quotations from “A Cyborg’s Father” by Dave Brennan with Explanation

🌸 Quotation	✨ Explanation
“My daughter is alarming. Is the alarm.” (Brennan, 2025)	Conflates child and machine, showing how technology integrates with the body until identity blurs. The child becomes signal and system.
“If my daughter is part machine I am by extension a part of that machine. The cyborg’s father is also cyborg. I am an operating system. I am a pancreas.” (Brennan, 2025)	Illustrates the father’s merging with technological care, redefining parental identity as machinic extension.
“I have become a system of responses… performing a patterned choreography void of conscious thought. A command in a script. Run program.” (Brennan, 2025)	Captures the automation of caregiving, where love takes the form of routine scripts akin to machine processes.
“Human error. Inherent error. Kill process. Metadata drip.” (Brennan, 2025)	Fragmented prose mirrors machine code, dramatizing the father’s exhaustion and fallibility within the cyborg system.
“Knowledge is assurance. Data is assurance.” (Brennan, 2025)	Suggests intimacy and security are mediated by technology; data becomes a new language of love.
“In treating our daughter the hospital stripped us of connection, stripped away our intimacy, left us untethered.” (Brennan, 2025)	Critiques medical institutions for alienating rather than empowering, showing the clash between parental cyborg care and institutional biopolitics.
“He understands that machines do not worry. He attempts to delete worry from his files. Deletion fails.” (Brennan, 2025)	Demonstrates the difference between human affect and machinic logic; worry is irreducibly human.
“The shifting numbers on the display: he understands them as a form of normal love.” (Brennan, 2025)	Reimagines love as technologically mediated, where numbers and data become affective symbols.
“Inside this house where she must live… the knowledge that this is a house she can never leave.” (Brennan, 2025)	Metaphor for chronic illness and technological embodiment as permanent architecture. Suggests confinement but also possibility of transformation.
“How might we make it her strength, her armor, her insurrection?” (Brennan, 2025)	Points toward empowerment and resistance, reframing technological dependence as a potential site of agency.

“On My Tongue” by Alycia Pirmohamed: A Critical Analysis

“On My Tongue” by Alycia Pirmohamed appeared in her 2021 debut collection Another Way to Split Water, a work that carries the lyric pulse of diasporic longing and spiritual inheritance.

Introduction: “On My Tongue” by Alycia Pirmohamed

“On My Tongue” by Alycia Pirmohamed appeared in her 2021 debut collection Another Way to Split Water, a work that carries the lyric pulse of diasporic longing and spiritual inheritance. The poem is an autobiographical meditation on memory, language, and faith, beginning with the primal utterance of Bismillah as the first point of consciousness. Here, Pirmohamed folds personal history into sacred textuality: the Qur’an, in its dual hearts of Arabic and English, becomes both a threshold and a struggle. The child’s attempt to inhabit the Qur’an’s original tongue, and the uneasy recognition that translation risks turning locusts into mere words, testifies to the tension between sacred authenticity and diasporic dislocation. Its popularity arises from this delicate poise between reverence and vulnerability—the moment where the poet admits, “I read and read, and yet / I struggled to recite in Arabic,” yet still insists that Bismillah calls her back into love, into continuity, into the birdlike flight of spirit. In Harold Bloom’s idiom, the strength of this lyric lies in its agon with precursors—the Qur’an itself, ancestral memory, the inherited tongue—and the poet’s victory comes not in mastery, but in transforming the scriptural into a living metaphor of persistence: “On my tongue, there is / a short-horned grasshopper.” The poem, therefore, endures because it dramatizes the universal struggle of inheriting language and faith, making the sacred at once intimate and estranged, yet necessary for survival.

Text: “On My Tongue” by Alycia Pirmohamed

Bismillah is my first memory.

I became a bird in the Qur’an

at hardly eight years old.

I opened the dark green cover

and revealed the slippery

two hearts: Arabic

and its English translation.

On Saturdays, I learned to repeat

passages in Arabic,

to recite the Qur’an

in its truest language—

otherwise are the locusts

really locusts?

I read and read, and yet

I struggled to recite in Arabic.

This was not a problem

with my memory.

I learned in a week how

to recite the first verse in English.

Sometimes I think every Qur’an

has a dark green cover.

Sometimes I think I still

become a bird

when, in my mind, I remember

Bismillah, ar-Rahman, ar-Rahim.

This must be the reason I

continue to love.

On my tongue, there is

a short-horned grasshopper.

Bismillah, I reach for you again.

Annotations: “On My Tongue” by Alycia Pirmohamed

Stanza	Annotation	Literary Devices
1. “Bismillah is my first memory.”	The poet recalls her earliest memory: the sacred phrase Bismillah (“In the name of God”), marking the deep connection between faith and childhood.	🌿 Allusion (to Islamic phrase) ✨ Imagery (memory as sensory anchor)
2. “I became a bird in the Qur’an / at hardly eight years old.”	She imagines herself as a bird in the Qur’an, symbolizing innocence, transformation, and spiritual flight through scripture.	🐦 Metaphor (self as bird) ✨ Symbolism (bird = freedom/spirituality)
3. “I opened the dark green cover / and revealed the slippery / two hearts: Arabic / and its English translation.”	The Qur’an’s physical presence is described: dark green cover, and the two “hearts” (Arabic and English) symbolizing dual languages and layered meaning.	📖 Imagery (visual + tactile) 🌿 Personification (pages as “hearts”)
4. “On Saturdays, I learned to repeat / passages in Arabic, / to recite the Qur’an / in its truest language— / otherwise are the locusts / really locusts?”	The speaker recalls learning Arabic recitation on weekends, valuing authenticity of scripture in its original tongue. The locusts metaphor questions if translation can capture truth.	✨ Rhetorical Question 🌿 Metaphor (locusts = distorted translation) 📖 Religious symbolism
5. “I read and read, and yet / I struggled to recite in Arabic. / This was not a problem / with my memory.”	Despite effort, the poet struggles with Arabic pronunciation, but stresses it’s not due to forgetfulness, but difficulty with the foreign tongue.	🌿 Contrast (reading vs. reciting) ✨ Tone of struggle
6. “I learned in a week how / to recite the first verse in English.”	English comes easier, showing both comfort in the mother tongue and distance from Arabic, even in religious learning.	📖 Irony (ease in English vs. struggle in Arabic) ✨ Juxtaposition
7. “Sometimes I think every Qur’an / has a dark green cover.”	The poet universalizes her memory, associating all Qur’ans with that specific childhood image.	🌿 Symbolism (green cover = permanence of memory) 📖 Hyperbole
8. “Sometimes I think I still / become a bird / when, in my mind, I remember / Bismillah, ar-Rahman, ar-Rahim.”	Repetition of bird imagery: faith still transforms her spirit. The Qur’anic verse evokes soaring spirituality.	🐦 Refrain/Imagery (bird again) ✨ Allusion (to opening verse of Qur’an) 🌿 Spiritual metaphor
9. “This must be the reason I / continue to love.”	Love—spiritual, human, or divine—is linked back to the recitation of sacred words. Faith becomes the root of compassion.	🌿 Cause-effect ✨ Religious undertone 📖 Theme of love as faith
10. “On my tongue, there is / a short-horned grasshopper. / Bismillah, I reach for you again.”	The poem ends with tension: the tongue still wrestles with recitation (grasshopper = awkwardness or interruption), yet the speaker continues to seek closeness with God through Bismillah.	🐦 Symbolism (grasshopper = difficulty, imperfection) 🌿 Imagery ✨ Cyclical ending (return to Bismillah)

Literary And Poetic Devices: “On My Tongue” by Alycia Pirmohamed

Device	Example & Explanation
Allusion 🕊️	Example: “Bismillah is my first memory.” Explanation: Bismillah (“In the name of God”) is a direct, cultural, and religious reference to the standard opening invocation in Islam, immediately setting the tone and context of faith and memory.
Anaphora ✨	Example: “Sometimes I think every Qur’an… / Sometimes I think I still become a bird” Explanation: The repetition of the phrase “Sometimes I think” at the start of consecutive lines/stanzas creates a rhythmic pattern, emphasizing the speaker’s contemplative, recurring thoughts on faith and memory.
Apostrophe 📞	Example: “Bismillah, I reach for you again.” Explanation: The speaker directly addresses “you”—likely referring to the Qur’an, God, or the memory/essence of faith itself—as if an absent or non-human entity were present, creating intimacy and direct appeal.
Assonance 🪶	Example: “I became a bird in the Qur’an” Explanation: The repetition of the short ‘i’ vowel sound in “became,” “bird,” and “in” creates a subtle internal rhyme and lyrical flow, linking the abstract transformation to the sacred text.
Caesura ⏸️	Example: “two hearts: Arabic / and its English translation.” Explanation: The strong pause, marked by the colon, forcefully separates “Arabic” from the subsequent description, emphasizing the initial, primary importance of the original language.
Conceit (Metaphorical) 🧠	Example: The sustained comparison of the act of reciting or remembering the Qur’an to “becoming a bird.” Explanation: This extended, central metaphor links spiritual transcendence, lightness, and the memorization of sacred text to the physical freedom and voice of a bird.
Connotation 💚	Example: “dark green cover” Explanation: The phrase evokes more than just color; dark green in this context holds connotations of Islamic tradition, sanctity, and reverence often associated with the color in the faith.
Contrast / Juxtaposition 🌓	Example: “Arabic and its English translation.” Explanation: The two languages are placed immediately side-by-side, creating a tension and highlighting the duality the speaker experiences in accessing the sacred text.
Enjambment ➡️	Example: “I opened the dark green cover / and revealed the slippery / two hearts: Arabic” Explanation: Lines run on without punctuation, propelling the reader forward and mimicking the smooth, physical act of opening the book and revealing its contents.
Hyperbole / Exaggeration 💫	Example: “Bismillah is my first memory.” Explanation: While possibly literally true, the claim emphasizes the profound, earliest, and foundational importance of faith, rather than simply stating it’s an early memory.
Imagery (Sensory) 👅	Example: “slippery two hearts” Explanation: This is a tactile image, appealing to the sense of touch. It conveys the physical feel of the thin, high-quality paper of the sacred text.
Internal Rhyme 🌟	Example: “I read and read, and yet / I struggled to recite in Arabic.” Explanation: While not a perfect end-rhyme, the subtle sonic similarity between “read,” “yet,” and “recite” creates a slight internal resonance, mirroring the internal struggle described.
Metaphor 🐦	Example: “I became a bird in the Qur’an” Explanation: The speaker is not literally a bird, but the phrase is used to represent the feeling of lightness, fluency, or spiritual elevation achieved through recitation.
Metonymy / Synecdoche ❤️	Example: “revealed the slippery / two hearts” Explanation: “Two hearts” is used to stand in for the two parts/sides of the book (Arabic text and English translation), symbolizing the essential, living core of the religious experience.
Parallelism (Syntactic) ⚖️	Example: “Sometimes I think every Qur’an… / Sometimes I think I still…” Explanation: The use of similar grammatical structure (Subject + verb + verb) in successive clauses or lines creates rhythm and emphasizes the continuity of the speaker’s reflection.
Punctuation for Emphasis (Colon) :	Example: “two hearts: Arabic” Explanation: The colon is used not just grammatically, but rhetorically to pause the reader and draw immediate attention to the list or explanation that follows.
Rhetorical Question 🤔	Example: “otherwise are the locusts / really locusts?” Explanation: The question, which expects no direct answer, emphasizes the belief that the truest meaning and spiritual power of the text are only unlocked in its original, sacred language.
Symbolism 🦗	Example: “short-horned grasshopper” Explanation: This insect is a more specific and physically grounded symbol than the spiritual “locusts.” It represents the small, distracting, perhaps difficult-to-control sounds or foreign sounds on the tongue, contrasting with the desired spiritual “bird” song.
Tone 😔	Example: Phrases like “I struggled to recite” and “This was not a problem with my memory.” Explanation: The predominant reflective and slightly melancholy or pensive tone conveys the speaker’s deep internal grappling with faith, language fluency, and the nature of translation.

Themes: “On My Tongue” by Alycia Pirmohamed

🌿 Theme 1: Memory and Origins: “On My Tongue” by Alycia Pirmohamed begins with the evocative recollection, “Bismillah is my first memory.” This opening situates the poem within the realm of origins, both personal and spiritual. The poet anchors her earliest consciousness not in a material object or domestic scene but in the sacred invocation, Bismillah. This moment of remembrance is more than autobiographical—it is archetypal, linking her identity to a language of divine beginnings. The Qur’an becomes a repository of memory as well, with its “dark green cover” symbolizing continuity across time and place. Thus, the theme of memory in Pirmohamed’s poem underscores how spiritual utterances shape identity, binding childhood impressions to eternal meanings.

📖 Theme 2: Language and Translation: “On My Tongue” by Alycia Pirmohamed foregrounds the duality of expression through the “two hearts: Arabic / and its English translation.” The poet confronts the struggle between authentic recitation and the limitations of translation. She questions whether without Arabic, “are the locusts really locusts?”—a line that highlights the precarious transformation of meaning when sacred text is rendered into another language. The poem thus dramatizes the tension between memory and articulation, the original and the translated. By acknowledging her difficulty—“I struggled to recite in Arabic”—the poet emphasizes how diasporic identity often negotiates between inherited tongues and adopted linguistic realities, revealing the fragility and necessity of both.

🕊️ Theme 3: Faith and Spiritual Transformation: “On My Tongue” by Alycia Pirmohamed presents faith as both struggle and transcendence. The speaker recalls becoming “a bird in the Qur’an / at hardly eight years old,” a metaphor of transformation that suggests flight, purity, and spiritual ascent. The act of reciting—even imperfectly—becomes a way of embodying sacred language. The repeated invocation of Bismillah ties faith not merely to ritual, but to love and endurance: “This must be the reason I / continue to love.” Through this intertwining of divine remembrance and personal emotion, the poem illuminates faith as a lived experience that shapes identity and sustains inner growth, even in the midst of linguistic difficulty.

🍃 Theme 4: Diaspora, Identity, and Continuity: “On My Tongue” by Alycia Pirmohamed also speaks to the diasporic condition—the negotiation between heritage and present identity. The poet imagines that “every Qur’an / has a dark green cover,” a projection that reflects both a longing for universality and an acknowledgment of displacement. Her inability to fully master Arabic does not sever her from her roots; instead, it transforms her connection into metaphor and memory. The grasshopper “on my tongue” at the poem’s close becomes an image of persistence, survival, and the ongoing attempt to bridge gaps between languages and worlds. The title itself, On My Tongue, signals this tension—language as both burden and blessing, a site where identity is continuously re-forged in diaspora.

Literary Theories and “On My Tongue” by Alycia Pirmohamed

🌿 Theory	📖 Application to “On My Tongue”	✍️ Textual Reference
🕊️ Postcolonial Theory	The poem reflects the diasporic negotiation between heritage and adopted culture. The struggle with Arabic and reliance on English mirrors the colonial legacy of linguistic displacement. It questions authenticity in translation and survival of cultural identity in migration.	“two hearts: Arabic / and its English translation” ; “I struggled to recite in Arabic”
📚 Reader-Response Theory	Meaning arises through the reader’s identification with memory, faith, or linguistic struggle. The text invites readers (Muslim or non-Muslim) to recall their own formative encounters with sacred or cultural texts, shaping interpretation.	“Sometimes I think every Qur’an / has a dark green cover”
🌍 Cultural Studies	The poem situates individual memory within collective identity. Faith and scripture are not merely private but part of cultural rituals (e.g., Saturday Qur’an lessons), showing how religion, language, and family structures transmit values across generations.	“On Saturdays, I learned to repeat / passages in Arabic”
💫 Psychoanalytic Theory	The Qur’an becomes a symbolic object of desire, shaping the unconscious attachment to language and love. The grasshopper image on the tongue suggests both repression (struggle with recitation) and sublimation (finding beauty in memory).	“On my tongue, there is / a short-horned grasshopper” ; “This must be the reason I / continue to love”

Critical Questions about “On My Tongue” by Alycia Pirmohamed

🌿 Question 1: How does “On My Tongue” by Alycia Pirmohamed explore the tension between language, memory, and faith?

“On My Tongue” by Alycia Pirmohamed situates language at the heart of religious and cultural memory. The poem illustrates how faith is preserved not only through belief but also through the act of recitation. The speaker struggles with Arabic—the sacred language of the Qur’an—yet finds fluency in English, exposing a tension between inherited faith and personal linguistic capacity. Memory plays a crucial role: the first word, Bismillah, becomes a lifelong anchor, showing how sound and word transcend language barriers. This duality highlights the immigrant and diasporic experience, where sacred traditions must be navigated through translation. The poem acknowledges the difficulty of embodying faith across languages, yet insists that the divine essence can still dwell “on my tongue.” Thus, Pirmohamed presents language as both a bridge and a barrier, where memory of faith transforms imperfection into enduring spirituality.

✨ Question 2: What role does imagery of birds and insects play in “On My Tongue” by Alycia Pirmohamed?

“On My Tongue” by Alycia Pirmohamed uses the recurring bird and insect imagery to represent transformation, struggle, and the imperfect beauty of faith. The metaphor of becoming a bird in the Qur’an symbolizes spiritual ascent, purity, and the imaginative power of childhood learning. It reflects the speaker’s innocence and the liberating potential of sacred recitation. Later, the short-horned grasshopper represents difficulty and imperfection—the awkward, stumbling tongue that cannot fully master Arabic pronunciation. The contrast between bird and insect highlights the duality of aspiration versus reality: faith elevates, but human limitation constrains. This imagery also reinforces the natural world as a spiritual metaphor, echoing Islamic symbolism where creatures often embody divine order. By ending with the grasshopper, Pirmohamed underscores that faith is not about flawless recitation but about persistence and devotion. These images ultimately dramatize the embodied, fragile, yet deeply authentic nature of belief.

📖 Question 3: How does “On My Tongue” by Alycia Pirmohamed reflect the diasporic Muslim experience?

“On My Tongue” by Alycia Pirmohamed reflects the challenges of practicing faith within a diasporic context, where language and cultural distance complicate spiritual traditions. The speaker learns to recite Arabic passages every Saturday, suggesting formal religious education within a Western setting. The Qur’an’s “two hearts”—Arabic and English—symbolize the split identity of diasporic Muslims who balance ancestral language with the dominant tongue of their adopted homeland. The struggle to recite Arabic faithfully underscores the feeling of partial belonging: connected to tradition but distanced from fluency. Yet the poem avoids despair. Instead, it emphasizes persistence and love, showing that devotion transcends perfect pronunciation. The diasporic believer, though imperfect in linguistic mastery, remains spiritually whole. By weaving in both childhood memory and adult reflection, Pirmohamed captures the continuity of faith across time and space, embodying how Muslim identity survives translation and thrives in hybrid cultural forms.

🐦 Question 4: Why does “On My Tongue” by Alycia Pirmohamed begin and end with “Bismillah,” and what is its significance?

“On My Tongue” by Alycia Pirmohamed frames the entire poem with Bismillah, the Arabic phrase meaning “In the name of God, the Most Merciful, the Most Compassionate.” Beginning with this memory and ending with its repetition emphasizes the centrality of divine invocation in the speaker’s life. The cyclical structure suggests that faith is not linear but recurring, continually renewed through memory and utterance. Even when language falters, returning to Bismillah affirms devotion and spiritual resilience. The phrase operates as both anchor and refuge, allowing the speaker to connect to God despite linguistic limitations. By closing with “I reach for you again,” Pirmohamed underscores faith as a continuous striving—never complete, always in process. Thus, the repetition of Bismillah becomes not just ritual but resistance against forgetting, a sacred rhythm that sustains identity across cultural and linguistic disjunctions, embodying both struggle and love.

Literary Works Similar to “On My Tongue” by Alycia Pirmohamed

“Arabic” by Naomi Shihab Nye 🗣️
- Similarity: It explores the spiritual power and emotional intimacy achieved only through accessing the Arabic language.

“If They Come for Us” (The title poem) by Fatimah Asghar 🕌
- Similarity: The poem grapples with the fragmented self resulting from navigating Muslim faith and identity across two cultures.

“Immigrant Blues” by Li-Young Lee 🍎
- Similarity: It addresses the sense of displacement and the loss of linguistic rootedness when identity is split between homelands.

“Tries the Grammar of the Arabic to Fit the Language the English” by Noor Jaber ✍️
- Similarity: This work explicitly details the friction, difficulty, and contortion involved in translating the sacred space between Arabic and English.

Representative Quotations of “On My Tongue” by Alycia Pirmohamed

🌿 Quotation	📖 Context	💡 Theoretical Perspective
🕊️ “Bismillah is my first memory.”	Establishes the poem’s spiritual and autobiographical opening, grounding identity in sacred utterance.	Psychoanalytic Theory – Memory as the primal site of identity formation.
🍃 “I became a bird in the Qur’an / at hardly eight years old.”	Childhood experience of transformation through sacred text.	Mythological/Archetypal Theory – Bird as symbol of transcendence and spiritual flight.
📚 “two hearts: Arabic / and its English translation.”	Reflects linguistic duality and the struggle of diasporic identity.	Postcolonial Theory – Negotiating between inherited and colonial languages.
🌍 “On Saturdays, I learned to repeat / passages in Arabic.”	Depicts ritual learning within community and tradition.	Cultural Studies – Religious practice as cultural transmission across generations.
🔥 “otherwise are the locusts / really locusts?”	Raises the problem of authenticity in translation of sacred text.	Deconstruction – Questions the instability of language and meaning.
🌌 “I read and read, and yet / I struggled to recite in Arabic.”	Emphasizes personal difficulty in reconciling memory with ritual.	Reader-Response Theory – Readers identify with struggle and partial comprehension.
🌱 “I learned in a week how / to recite the first verse in English.”	Highlights ease of English versus difficulty of Arabic.	Postcolonial Linguistic Theory – Reflects colonial legacy of privileging English.
✨ “Sometimes I think every Qur’an / has a dark green cover.”	Universalizes personal memory into collective image.	Phenomenology – Memory as subjective but projected as universal.
💫 “This must be the reason I / continue to love.”	Links faith to love and continuity of belief.	Psychoanalytic/Lacanian Theory – Desire and affect sustained through symbolic order.
🐞 “On my tongue, there is / a short-horned grasshopper.”	Final metaphor fusing nature, speech, and sacred invocation.	Ecocriticism – Nature and sacred language intertwine as survival and renewal.

M	T	W	T	F	S	S
1	2	3	4	5	6	7
8	9	10	11	12	13	14
15	16	17	18	19	20	21
22	23	24	25	26	27	28
29	30

Day: September 30, 2025