Report on Migration of Roes: Chapter 51 Summary and Analysis
⚠️ Spoiler Warning: This guide contains detailed spoilers for the entire novel. Proceed only if you've finished reading or are comfortable knowing the plot.
Summary
“Report on Migration of Roes” is a found poem created from the 1922 sociological study The Negro in Chicago, which examined the aftermath of the 1919 Chicago race riots. Gorman recontextualizes the voices of African American migrants who left the Jim Crow South, replacing “North” or “Chicago” with Panpax, “South” or “back home” with Pandem, and “Negroes” with “roes.” The poem presents itself as a survey conducted by Panpax President Pact, addressing new arrivals from the diseased, restrictive land of Pandem. Migrants answer questions about freedom, hardship, and daily life. Their replies reveal a mix of relief, exhaustion, and cautious hope—many feel freer, yet struggle with crowding, loneliness, and the weight of adjustment. A few express disappointment or a desire to return. The poem closes with the author’s reflection on fiction, memory, and grief, suggesting that the past is not gone but waiting to be found. The chapter blurs the line between historical fact and imaginative re‑creation.
Key Events
- The fictional Panpax government welcomes migrants from Pandem and publishes a survey of their experiences.
- Migrants describe what they were doing, feeling, and wanting: “Looking,” “Tired,” “People.”
- Respondents report new freedoms: moving freely using sidewalks, attending shows, shopping, and not giving up space to others.
- Some note difficulties: crowdedness, climate change, difficulty adjusting to “the ways of people.”
- Opinions on whether to advise friends to migrate are split: some encourage, others warn that it may not work for everyone.
- The chapter reveals that the survey answers are adapted from the actual 1922 Chicago Commission on Race Relations report, with terms changed for the poem.
- Gorman explains the word “Panpax” as a combination of pan (all) and pax (peace).
- The poem ends with meditations on how fiction can hold truth, how memory can be inherited, and how grief can become a window.
Character Development
- Roes (migrants): The numbered respondents—only voices, not individuals. Their collective testimony shows resilience, hope, and lingering trauma. Some are optimistic about freedom; others remain skeptical or lonely.
- President Pact: A distant, bureaucratic figure. He frames the survey as helpful, but his opening speech emphasizes Panpax’s superiority and Pandem’s misery, hinting at condescension.
- The Surveyors / Commissioners: Offstage agents who reduce lived experience to bullet points. Their presence contrasts the intimate answers with impersonal data collection.
- The Speaker/Author (Amanda Gorman’s lyrical ‘I’): Appears in the final passage to reflect on memory, grief, and the act of repurposing the past. This voice bridges the historical source and the present reader.
Themes, Symbols, or Motifs Actually Evidenced Here
- Migration and Displacement: The entire poem is built around the movement from Pandem to Panpax. Migrants seek refuge, but the process is disorienting; one respondent says, “Was completely lost.”
- Freedom and Its Limits: Most respondents feel greater independence, yet some note dangers: “Freedom . . . but it ain’t always safe.” Freedom is partial, conditional.
- The Bureaucratic Gaze: The survey format reduces human experience to numbered answers. The official tone (“Welcome, Migrants”) masks the pain behind the data.
- Memory and History: Gorman uses a historical document to craft a contemporary poem. She claims that “the past is never gone, just not yet found,” suggesting that history lives on in inherited memory.
- Grief as a Window: The final metaphor pairs grief with glass: it can be both a mirror (self‑reflection) and a window (seeing outward to others and across time). “We become a window pain,” a pun on pain and windowpane.
- Renaming and Reclaiming: The act of replacing original terms (Chicago → Panpax, Negroes → roes) both conceals and reveals. “Roes” derives from “woes,” underscoring the suffering of the migrants.
Why This Chapter Matters
Chapter 51 is the most explicit act of literary appropriation in Call Us What We Carry. It demonstrates how Gorman transforms a historical document into a living poem, aligning the Great Migration with contemporary experiences of displacement (whether from pandemic, violence, or political upheaval). By preserving the raw syntax of the interview responses, she gives weight to the actual words of people who lived through systemic racism and violence. The chapter challenges readers to see that “reports” and data contain real human voices, and that poetry can resurrect silenced experiences. It also serves as a hinge in the collection, where the poet reflects directly on the ethics and craft of working with found material.
Study Questions and Answers
1. Why does Gorman change the original terms from the 1922 report (e.g., “Chicago” to “Panpax,” “Negroes” to “roes”)? What effect does this renaming create?
Answer: She universalizes the migration narrative. “Panpax” (all‑peace) is an idealized destination that could be any country promising freedom. “Roes” (woes) emphasizes the migrants’ suffering over their race, inviting readers to connect the Great Migration to other refugee experiences. The renaming also forces the reader to sit with the strangeness of the fictional frame, making us question how we categorize people and places.
2. One respondent (number 4) says, “I thought it was some great place but found out it wasn’t. Living nothing but a hole. Sure wished I was back home.” How does this answer complicate the chapter’s portrayal of Panpax as an “idyllic country”?
Answer: Not all migrants find liberation. This voice introduces dissent: Panpax offers freedom on paper, but for some it brings disappointment, hard work, or isolation. The inclusion of such negative responses makes the survey feel more honest; the chapter resists a simple triumph narrative, acknowledging that migration comes with loss.
3. The chapter ends with the line “Grief, like glass, can be both a mirror and a window.” How does this metaphor reflect the poem’s use of historical grief?
Answer: Gorman uses the grief of 1919 migrants as a window to understand present displacement. By looking “out” through the old report, we see contemporary struggles; by looking “in,” we recognize shared vulnerability. The pun “window pain” suggests that grief itself is a lens, painful but necessary for empathy. The poem is both a mirror of the past and a window onto our own time.