GCSE: ‘Name Journeys’ – Raman Mundair’

LO: to be able to explore the writer’s messages and ideas about identity and belonging.

DO NOW

Pre-reading task

Find the correct definitions for our ‘tricky’

words.

★ Challenge:
Can you come up with three keywords for our
lesson based on the learning objective and
the ‘tricky’ words?

★ Big Question: Who was Raman Mundair and how does she portray her experience of migration and transitioning into a new
 Green pen - you have 5 minutes to respond to my feedback on

DO NOW

Pre-reading task

Find the correct definitions for our ‘tricky’

words.

★ Challenge:
Can you come up with three keywords for our
lesson based on the learning objective and
the ‘tricky’ words?

★ Big Question: Who was Raman Mundair and how does she portray her experience of migration and transitioning into a new
 4. entwined:
DO NOW A) copying something Challenges:
B) cutting something
Can you find the correct definitions for C) twisting together Can you come up with three
the ‘tricky’ words? keywords for our lesson
based on the learning
5. swathe: objective and the ‘tricky’
A) broad strip of something words?
B) bundling something together
1. wilderness:
C) swimming
A) a neglected or abandoned area
B) an area filled with flowers
• C) a desert
6. tapestries:
A) picture created by weaving
2. companion: B) sticking images together
A) an enemy C) paintings on glass
B) an object to use
C) a partner

7. infertile:
3. chastened: A) unable to build things
A) a telling off B) unable to reproduce
B) a religious event C) unable to pass a test
C) running quickly
 4. entwined:
DO NOW A) copying something Challenges:
B) cutting something
Can you find the correct definitions for C) twisting together Can you come up with three
the ‘tricky’ words? keywords for our lesson
based on the learning
5. swathe: objective and the ‘tricky’
A) broad strip of something words?
B) bundling something together
1. wilderness:
C) swimming
A) a neglected or abandoned area
B) an area filled with flowers
• C) a desert
6. tapestries:
A) picture created by weaving
2. companion: B) sticking images together
A) an enemy C) paintings on glass
B) an object to use
C) a partner

7. infertile:
3. chastened: A) unable to build things
A) a telling off B) unable to reproduce
B) a religious event C) unable to pass a test
C) running quickly
 GCSE: ‘Name Journeys’ – Raman Mundair’
LO: to be able to explore the writer’s messages and ideas about identity and belonging.

Success Criteria

Who was Raman and What are the poet’s

Pre-reading: what has been her overall messages and
understand experience of ideas?
challenging migration?
vocabulary.
What does the term
anglocised mean and What is our response
Read poem and make what impact can this to the poem?
first impressions. have on the identity?

Migration Identity Anglocised

 List four interesting facts about the author Who is Raman Mundair?

★ Raman Mundair was born in India and moved to Manchester to live with her father in the 1970s
at the age of five and she spent her formative years in that northern city between the ages of
four and fifteen.

★ She is a multidisciplinary artist and has said, ‘I play with voice, I play with the many tongues I
have, and manipulate the many forms I can take’.

★ She has also said that upon moving to England, she was ‘put in a class for the educationally
subnormal’ and ‘learnt English in order to disrupt it’.

★ Mundair identifies as neurodiverse, disabled, Queer and a British Asian intersectional feminist.

★ She challenges the ideas of stereotypes and doesn’t want her work to be reductive. Her work questions the construction of
identities and she says her writings are ‘meditations on the outsider’.

★ In the lines above from ‘Name Journeys’, the poet lingers on language, accent and dialect (both Indian and Mancunian), as itself
unhomely. Unable to accommodate or communicate, language twists tongues and falls upon deaf ears in these lines. In other
poems, Mundair reveals an (albeit qualified) affinity for the city, and her attachments to the north are pursued more fully in her
next book.

Can you define our key words?

Migration Identity Anglicised
 GCSE: ‘Name Journeys’ – Raman Mundair’
LO: to be able to explore the writer’s messages and ideas about identity and belonging.

Success Criteria

Who was Raman and What are the poet’s

Pre-reading: what has been her overall messages and
understand experience of ideas?
challenging migration?
vocabulary.
What does the term
anglocised mean and What is our response
Read poem and make what impact can this to the poem?
first impressions. have on the identity?

Migration Identity Anglicised

 1) What’s in a name?
Think – Pair - Share

• What is the story behind your name?

• Were you named after a special person or place?
• Do you know the meaning behind your name?

Be prepared to share your ideas!

Challenge – how does your name formulate your identity?

 2) Journeys?
Think – Pair - Share
• What is a journey – when would you call something a
journey rather than a trip?
• In what circumstances do we go on a journey?
• Have you been on one – what was your experience?

Be prepared to share your ideas!

Challenge: Create a mind map with the

connotations of the word ‘journey’
Key word: connotation
An idea or feeling invoked by a word
 Pre-Reading Predictions
The title of the poem we are going to study today is ‘Name Journeys’.

Bring together your ideas about ‘names’ and ‘journeys’ to make a prediction about:

▪ The narrative of the poem

▪ The themes in the poem
▪ The tone of the poem

Finish this sentence in your exercise books: I predict the poem will…
What are our initial ideas? Think, Pair, Share
➔ I read once.
➔ We explore keywords.
1) What are the speaker’s feelings?
➔ You read once more.
How do you know?

2) Underline any names you read

(these could be people, places or things)

3) Highlight any other words you find

interesting or would like to find out more
about

★ Challenge: Can you tell us what

Mundair’s journey has been like?
What do you know about these names?

▪ Rama
▪ Sita
▪ Draupadi
▪ Punjabi
▪ English
▪ Mancunian
▪ Anglo
What do you know about these names?

▪ Rama
▪ Sita
▪ Draupadi
▪ Punjabi
▪ English
▪ Mancunian
▪ Anglo
 What do you know about these names?
▪ Rama
A Hindu deity known for his bravery, chivalry and
embodiment of stereotypical heroic qualities.

▪ Sita
A strong, beautiful woman who was married to Rama.

▪Draupadi
A beautiful, intelligent and virtuous woman considered to
be the first feminist of Hindu mythology.
What do you know about these words?
Punjabi Mancunian

Language spoken in the Punjab

Relating to Manchester.
region of Pakistan and India.

English Anglo

Relating to or descended from the

Relating to England, the English Angles, England, English culture,
people or language. the English people or
the English language.
What are our initial ideas? Annotate
➔ I read once.
➔ We explore keywords.
➔ You read once more. 1) What is the narrative of the
poem?

2) How does her name go on a

journey?

3) Highlight the similes in the poem.

4) Who does the speaker compare

themselves to? What is the effect
of this?

5) What is the effect of the verb

‘dislodged’?

6) Why do you think the speaker

describes English soil as
‘infertile’?

7) How does this image contrast

with the images of ‘banyan
leaves’ and ‘sugar cane’?
 GCSE: ‘Name Journeys’ – Raman Mundair’
LO: to be able to explore the writer’s messages and ideas about identity and belonging.

Success Criteria

Who was Raman and What are the poet’s

Pre-reading: what has been her overall messages and
understand experience of ideas?
challenging migration?
vocabulary.
What does the term
anglocised mean and What is our response
Read poem and make what impact can this to the poem?
first impressions. have on the identity?

Migration Identity Anglocised

LESSON 2 - 3
 GCSE: ‘Name Journeys’ – Raman Mundair’
LO: to be able to explore the writer’s messages and ideas about identity and belonging.

DO NOW

Pre-reading task

Complete the multiple choice

questions on our new poem.

Migration Identity Anglocised

Challenge: What is the poet’s message

in this poem?

★ Big Question: Who was Raman Mundair and how does she portray her experience of migration and transitioning into a new
 DO NOW 5 The speakers experience has been a…? Challenges:
Complete the multiple choice questions on our new
poem.
a) Adventurous journey What is the poet’s message in
b) Near death experience
c) Trial by fire this poem?
1 Who does the speaker compare themselves to?
a) Raman
b) Rama 7 The speakers names became a ______ in English
c) Ravan mouths?
a) curse
b) stumble
2 What has the speaker not been blessed with? c) blessing
a) counterpart
b) concierge
c) companion 8 What effect do the similes at the beginning
have?
a) Celebrate Indian mythology
3 How does the speaker describe their journey? b) Promote religious beliefs
a) Between hot and cold c) Highlight the speaker’s isolation
b) Between colourful and dull
c) Between rough and smooth
9 What effect does the metaphor of milk teeth
falling out have?
a) Suggests a sense of loss of her mother tongue
4 What two languages does the poet refer to? as she grows up
a) Punjabi and English b) Highlights how she is no longer a child
b) Punjabi and Mancunian c) Indicates that she is glad to have learnt English
c) Hindi and English
 DO NOW 5 The speakers experience has been a…? Challenges:
Complete the multiple choice questions on our new
poem.
a) Adventurous journey What is the poet’s message in
b) Near death experience
c) Trial by fire this poem?
1 Who does the speaker compare themselves to?
a) Raman
b) Rama 7 The speakers names became a ______ in English
c) Ravan mouths?
a) curse
b) stumble
2 What has the speaker not been blessed with? c) blessing
a) counterpart
b) concierge
c) companion 8 What effect do the similes at the beginning
have?
a) Celebrate Indian mythology
3 How does the speaker describe their journey? b) Promote religious beliefs
a) Between hot and cold c) Highlight the speaker’s isolation
b) Between colourful and dull
c) Between rough and smooth
9 What effect does the metaphor of milk teeth
falling out have?
a) Suggests a sense of loss of her mother tongue
4 What two languages does the poet refer to? as she grows up
a) Punjabi and English b) Highlights how she is no longer a child
b) Punjabi and Mancunian c) Indicates that she is glad to have learnt English
c) Hindi and English
 Summary
★ The speaker begins with comparing themselves, their sense of loneliness and
isolation to the Hindu deity Rama.

★ They go on to lament their loneliness through highlighting their lack of a

companion, like deity Sita, and to describe the connection and similarities between
Sita and themselves.

★ They go on to talk about their name and use it as a metaphor for the sense of
discord they have felt moving from the Punjab to England.
 DO NOW: Make notes in your books:

THEMES:
EMOTIONS:
Belonging
Identity Sadness
Isolation Longing
Punishment Trauma
Language
Transitions

COMPARE WITH:
Homing by Liz Berry

pot by shamshad khan

A Century Later by Imtiaz Dharker

In a London Drawing Room –
 HAVE YOU ANNOTATED:
Annotations Key • Enjambment
• Semantic field
• Juxtaposition
● Structure • Extended metaphor
• Simile
● Language – Identity • Imagery
● Language – Religious / Cultural references • Oxymoron
● Language – Isolation
● Language – Struggle / Trauma

ANNOTATIONS =
SUBJECT TERMINOLOGY
INTERPRETATIONS (emotions)
ALTERNATE INTERPRETATIONS
LINK TO THEMES
 FORM & STRUCTURE

Name Journeys is written in free verse and structured in 12 unrhymed

open couplets. This means there is enjambment used to create run-on
lines between the couplets.

By structuring the poem in this way, the writer draws attention to the
images within each individual couplet and encourages a slower,
more deliberate reading of the poem, perhaps a parallel to the slow
and lonely transition from life in India to life in England where
aspects of new life did not always make sense and the speaker had to
slowly absorb new facets of her life.

The couplets follow no pattern or meter; this could suggest the discord
between the speaker’s two identities and cultures, her past and
present.
 From the opening line, Mundair uses the simile “Like Rama I have felt the wilderness” to construct her
cultural frame of reference. Throughout western poetry there is a tradition of referring to biblical or classical
imagery to illustrate themes. Mundair disrupts this by beginning her poem, written in English, with
comparisons to Hindu deities. There is therefore an assumption that this is the norm and she seizes upon
the construction of Hindu deities and other Asian iconography as being other: instead it is the lens with
which the speaker, and therefore the reader, perceive the world.

Equally, by drawing parallels to the story of Rama’s 14-year exile into the wilderness, Mundair
draws attention to the themes of isolation and punishment that continue throughout the
poem. The speaker laments their experience of being ‘chastened’ as similar to Hindu deity Sita’s
‘trial by fire’, wherein her purity and loyalty was tested. It seems that the speaker’s cultural identity
and her name are in question throughout the poem and her name takes on a deeper meaning
using synecdoche: her name represents her entire self and her struggle to be seen and accepted.
The verb ‘chastened’ has connotations of being treated unkindly and therefore creates sympathy
for the speaker who seems to be facing rebuke without reason, especially as the comparisons are
with ‘Sita’ who is praised for her goodness and perfection.

It is important to note that we are never told the speaker’s name – perhaps because this is
irrelevant as the poem deals with the struggles of identity of not just the speaker but of everyone
who travels to a new country with a different language and culture.

Challenge Word: Synecdoche - a figure of speech in which a part is made to represent the whole or vice
versa, as in England lost by six wickets (meaning ‘the English cricket team’).
The speaker describes her name as ‘a journey between rough and smooth’. This is a metaphor for
transitioning between geographical location and the dominant cultures of those spaces. Whilst the
speaker does not determine which culture or location is the ‘rough’ one – we can assume that the
newer space is the one that she is struggling with. The use of the preposition ‘between’ suggests
that there is no clean break from her homeland, she is straddling the line between the two and is not
wanting to let go or perhaps feels unable to let go of her ethnic background.

The metaphor where ‘the Punjabi in [their] mouth / became dislodged as milk
teeth fell’. Highlights that part of this transition between the two cultures involves
losing her identity and part of themselves when. With the specific reference to
‘milk teeth’ we see the speaker confront a harsh coming of age: as symbols of
their childhood fall, she also loses her mother tongue. The ‘milk teeth’ could also
be symbolic of their childhood innocence, suggesting that this transition has
been traumatic for them – arguably even stolen their childhood from them.

Linking this with the metaphor of the ‘infertile English soil’ there is a definite
suggestion of a lack of growth in England for the speaker, arguably even though
they have grown physically as time has passed – their personal / spiritual
growth has been stunted, especially as we see less and less examples of
cultural references as the poem moves on.
- The poet’s purpose is to
explore the struggle of
finding belonging and
connection to her new
culture and identity.
The ninth couplet uses alliteration to draw attention to the ‘rough musicality’ of the speaker’s new
language. The verb ‘accommodate’ is suggestive of language taking up space, living in and filling
the mouth of the speaker in the way that the speaker is also finding it hard to feel accommodated in
England and by the ‘English mouths’ that turn her name into a ‘stumble’. The speaker is drawing
attention to the broad experience of many whose names are not Anglo-Saxon, whose names are
mispronounced, and how the mispronunciation of a name can symbolise the erasure of an identity.

The final couplet shows the sense that the speaker’s identity has been
lost and consumed by an Anglo-centric perspective. This contrasts with
the first couplet that places Hindu memories and history as the frame of
reference.

The nouns ‘echo chamber’ and ‘void’ create imagery of a black

emptiness in which the speaker has become lost, symbolic for how their
own identity has been lost due to the diasporic journey that has snatched
their sense of belonging from them at a young age where they were
unable to stop this from happening.
 Review

Condense
the poem
into 3 key
quotes and
Migration Identity Anglocised
3 key
devices.
LESSON 4
 GCSE: ‘Name Journeys’ – Raman Mundair’
LO: to be able to explore the writer’s messages and ideas about identity and belonging.

DO NOW

Complete the Frayer model grid on our term ‘diaspora’.

Definition: noun Characteristics:

• the dispersion or spread of a people
from their original homeland.

• people who have spread or been

dispersed from their homeland.

Examples Non-Examples

Migration Identity Anglocised

How does Mundair feel about identity and the sense of
belonging?

Mundair’s poem demonstrates the trauma of migration

through…

Mundair explores the struggle of identity and anglicisation

and this can be seen when….
How does Mundair feel about identity and the sense of belonging?

‘Like Rama I have felt the wilderness

but I have not been blessed’

'became dislodged as milk teeth fell

and hit infertile English soil.’

'in the Anglo echo chamber –

void of history and memory.’
 Class Model: How does Mundair feel about identity and the sense of
belonging?
In “Name Journeys," Mundair portrays the traumatic struggle of straddling two cultures
and identities, there is a set-up of a forced choice between retaining the speaker’s WWW
cultural background – one that they are familiar with and feel a connection with or
embedding themselves into the language and symbolically the culture of England – their
new home. Mundair’s attitude towards identity suggests complexity but also a sense of
severity – the speaker does not seem to have a choice in balancing both identities but
EBI:
one must be discarded for the other. This is evident when Mundair describes how ‘the
Punjabi in [their] mouth / became dislodged as milk teeth fell’. This metaphor highlights
that part of this transition between the two cultures involves losing her identity and
part of herself with it. With the specific reference to ‘milk teeth’ we see the speaker
confront a harsh coming of age: as symbols of their childhood fall, she also loses her
mother tongue. The ‘milk teeth’ could also be symbolic of their childhood innocence,
suggesting that this transition has been traumatic for them – arguably even stolen their
childhood from them. However, the falling of milk teeth is inevitable – a part of growing
up; Mundair could be suggesting that as she grew up in Manchester from the age of 5 to
14, discarding her mother tongue and using English as her predominant language of
communication was not a choice but a forced side effect of her journey in a foreign
home.
 How does Mundair feel about identity and the sense of belonging?

Success Criteria
In Mundair’s poem, the speaker clearly feels a sense of ….
POINT T1: Make a clear point by rephrasing the question in your
topic sentence
For example, at the start of the poem, they state “.........” T2: Select a relevant quote to support your comment
EVIDENCE T3: Contextualise the quote - explain the literal meaning
T4: Name a language/structural technique – explain the
This suggests that the speaker is in a state of …… due to impact
EXPLAIN the …… T5: Analyse the word I’ve circled. How does it link to the
writer’s message?
Mundair’s use of ________ is interesting as it helps to T6: What are metaphorical and symbolic meanings of
TECHNIQUE create an idea/feeling/ tone ……. this word?
T7: Provide a secondary quote that links to the one you’ve
The keyword ‘.......’ means… already analysed – what is the cumulative effect?
ANALYZE It suggests….. T8: Explain how your comment supports the writer’s
Perhaps it symbolises…. message overall
T9: What are the effects on readers?
Ultimately, Mundair wanted her readers to…..
LINK (Feel/Imagine/Think-F.I.T)
CT 1: Provide an alternative interpretations
CT 2: Consider the symbolic meaning of the keyword.
Word bank
CT 3: Offer a perceptive comment on the writer’s
Isolation Traumatic Transition message here
Diaspora Identity Culture CT4:Critique how successful the language is – What is
Belonging Punishment Emptiness the writer’s message to us as modern readers? Use an