Compare how Bagheri’s Empty Envelope explores complex ideas about cultural identity? Discuss with detailed reference to the poem. 　

Bagheri’s Empty Envelope explores complex ideas about cultural identity by presenting the speaker’s experience of facing many challenges as a member of a minority cultural group in a multicultural home. Bagheri states that they were kids born between policies. These policies and laws detained and denied them freedom. She proceeds to say that the law enforcers ensured that they would never have a home. The cultural community to which Bagheri belongs drowned in prison camps due to more election winnings becoming political lies. Their culture had faded away because their disappeared boat was renamed, marking the washing away of their names as a symbol of their fallen or forgotten culture. Bagheri states that they were handed a new envelope containing a message of hope which, according to her, was empty. Bagheri proceeds to show the connection between the envelopes given to them and the social and economic state of the community. Bagheri recalls how, as a child, they would often find empty envelopes addressed to them in various languages These envelopes represented the speaker’s cultural identity, as they were reminders of the multiple cultures that made up their home. Bagheri reflects on how these envelopes made them feel included and excluded since they reminded them of the cultural differences existing among them. Bagheri ultimately decides that the empty envelopes symbolize their cultural identity since they show how different their lives were while growing up as members of a minority group in a multicultural home.

Empty Envelope
by Yasaman Bagheri
Falling off the sinking boat
With our hands held against the waves,
We kept the pattern to rescue
Every second’s worth and stretched to a lifetime.
Inside the cloud of spilled gasoline and blood
When hope was sinking down
Hands reached to rescue.
Our disappeared boat was given a name,
(U)nifrom (L)ima (A)lpha.
As if water had washed our names away;
Instead, numbers had appeared
From one to a hundred and two.
We were (re)named and handed an envelope –
A message of hope.
Time worked differently in there:
We watched it, counted it;
They got paid for it;
We suffered it, lost it;
Inside the reports never read.
We were kids born between policies.
The Border Force man spoke to us of laws.
Laws denied us, detained us.
Laws always designed against us.
When he sent out his men and
they had our throats in their hands,
I thought about how
‘Boat’ came before ‘People’
And ‘Border’ before ‘Force’.
This was the message of hope:
We opened it, an empty envelope,
Full of unwritten words:
‘We will make sure
You will never have a home.’
Every year we are less human
More popular election-winning lies.
You can rise from the ocean
With blood-coloured wings
Sharks will let you pass – unharmed.
But you will drown in prison camps.
Close your eyes this time,
Let me build you a boat
From my two hands,
A boat that will set you free
From these prison camps.
You will sail to no ‘Shore’ ‘Off’ of our hearts;
The road you’ll travel from seeking refuge to finding home,
Will not end behind a maximum-security fence;
Home will not be a place in the palm of your hands
Where you hold the tally mark of years –
(Un)lived in prison camps.
..ooOoo..