Overall Meaning of the Poem

The overall meaning of I Lost My Talk swings around the central theme of cultural assimilation and painful loss within Indigenous identity. In this poem, Joe narrates from an experience wherein she lost her "talk"—a metaphor for her inborn language and, by extension, her cultural heritage-owing to the forced assimilation practices she had to bear in a residential school. However, it is not merely loss with which the poem concludes but a desire to regain that lost language and identity and even to teach others about one's culture. This poem is a call for understanding and reconciliation.







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