How does Grace Nichols convey the life of the slave women in her poetry? Essay

One way approving Nichols establishs us how the buckle down women had to live is by saying what they had to do for their captors. In her song We the women grace of God says we the women who cutclearfetchdigsing. The head of not putting spaces between each tame shows how hard they had to work without a break. Grace besides says we the women who toil which also shows how hard they had to work. The simile whose deaths they sweep aside as easy as dead leaves shows how much they were hated and seen as pieces of rubbish. The use of the word we in the poem shows just how many women had been captu rosy and a gives a sense of empathy with the striver women. The sun in this poem is shown as a bad find out even though it gives life. To the slaves it is bad because it draw and quarters the labour they yield to do even harder than it should be.The slaves tried to cheer themselves up by singing. The verb sing in the poem has a religious connotation which shows their depression in God . However, this belief is doubted by the suffering they have to endure day after day and also because their entreaters go unsung, as Grace says. We see with the used adjective unadorned that the slaves were treated badly, misused and badly dressed because fashion did not matter to the captors only work.Grace Nichols uses repetition to vex the harshness of their lives as well. The words doddering dry-headed women leaning on her hoe argon repeated in the poem Up my spine to show how bad their condition was and how mistreated they were. It also shows the amount of heat exhaustion they get and the lack of counterbalance they have. Their heads argon burnt by the sun and the skin is dry. Grace also says in that poem that they have to work even if they are injured and hurt. This shows how much they dis akind slaves but had to use them for work to cave in money. The phrase Way back time when she had a fall is used to show that there is no medical help for the workers so they work till they die.Grace uses the senses to convey how awful the slaves lives were in this poem as well. Two examples of this are I see the pit of her eye and I hear her rattle bone laugh. This also conveys the bodily state that the slaves were in and how they looked. However their captors did nothing to help as it did not matter to them what they were like as long as they worked. The second example gives a sense of touch of disgust to the poem as she thinks that the slaves would want revenge on the everyplaceseers for what they did to them. After all no-one would want to work all day for nothing. The simile twist up and shaky like a crippled dirt ball which also conveys their lives.In the poem Water pot the workers are slaving away in a grove centre. Grace says in it, theres a water pot growing from her head. This is because the slave woman is carrying it on her head whenever they needed water which, in the heat, is often. It also shows how much work they had to do and for how long eve ry day. Grace says in this poem as well that they are like oxen always hurried.This conveys how badly they were treated and actually what the captors saw them as. The words tried to walk like a woman is used to show how injured they were because of work and the fact they could not walk properly. Grace implies that the slaves had to pull themselves erect to lapse some self-esteem, to keep going and not give up, and to show the overseers they leave behind survive whatever they throw at them. However a vast number of slaves died during the 18th snow alone.Ala is a poem about a woman killing her own child and then beingness punished for it. In the poem, the slave has given birth to a child which she does not wish to keep because of who the father is. In this instance the father is one of the overseers/captors who raped her. This poem also symbolizes the horror the slave women had to go through and the fact that the title is a religious word meaning god their scream for help to thei r God.The woman who is being tortured is lying on a board with her arms and legs spread-eagled and staked to the ground. This is an intimation of Jesus as he was crucified on a cross. The overseers see this woman as a greyback and are making an example to the others by killing her publicly. She is the scapegoat. Grace uses repetition here to show to us what was in line for the other women if they did the same. She also says the slave has sent the new-born soul winging its way back to Africa. This implies that the cosset is an angel as it has not been forced to work or put through any physical labour. Grace says the soul has gone to Africa because it is where most of the slaves originated from and it is then free.This woman is being eaten alive by red ants as a form of capital punishment for her actions. The personification in the line and the sun unreasoning her with his fury adds to the cruelty. The sun is a male figure and so takes the side of the men. The other slaves then pr ay to God for the deceased woman to be accepted in the pocket of his womb. This is a link up with the baby who was also killed. They are asking for the both of them to be free.Another poem Grace uses to convey the lives of the slave women is In My Name. This poem goes on about the horror the slave women had to go through. In this instance the baby is not killed therefore it is the opposite of Ala. The slave is in labour, giving birth to her curled bean as Grace describes it. The womans belly is an arc of black moon.This shows how unwanted the babies are and that the fathers are the overseers. The colour black is evil and we get the impression of what birth is like the way she squats over the dry plantain leaves and commands the earth to receive you. The baby is being dropped here onto the ground because there are no medical facilities available. Grace says the baby is my tainted, perfect child. This is an oxymoron because she is saying two virtual opposites together.The hatred towar ds the overseers raping them is shown in the words, my bastard fruit and my strange mulatto. The second example shows that the babys fathers parents are mixed race and the mother does not like this. It will always remind her of the slave drivers or her captors if she ever escapes from their grasp. Where as the first shows how appreciative the overseers are of the baby but not the mother. She wishes it wasnt born so it did not have to become a slave. Grace uses the words my sea grapeshot to show how far they have had to travel before arriving at their work place or deathbeds in many instances. At the end she says now my sweet one it is for you to swim showing that the baby should make its own decisions on its life and to begin its journey.Overall Grace Nichols poems show her hatred towards what happened to her ancestors long time ago and what is still happening today in some places. She believes ruling on it should be stricter and so there will be no slaves left.