The Speaker in Rudy Francisco's I'll Fly Away

Overview

The speaker of Rudy Francisco's I'll Fly Away serves as the unifying narrative voice across the collection, appearing in every poem as a first-person observer, confessor, and critic. Rather than a traditional protagonist with a single plot, the speaker is a composite persona—a Black American poet navigating personal memory, family history, romantic relationships, and systemic injustice. Through a series of lyrical vignettes, the speaker reveals himself as someone who wrestles with language, confronts trauma, and repeatedly chooses resilience. This analysis traces his arc through the collection, highlighting his defining traits, key relationships, and the themes his journey illuminates.

Plot Role

Because I'll Fly Away is a poetry collection without a continuous narrative, the speaker's role is that of a guide and subject. He recounts specific moments from his childhood and adulthood: learning to speak with a stutter (chapter 23), witnessing his parents' emotionally distant marriage (chapter 7), experiencing his mother's divorce (chapter 8), struggling with depression (chapter 14), and watching his father battle dementia (chapter 46). He also responds to public events—police shootings, mass shootings, gentrification—by offering intimate reactions and critiques. The speaker is less an actor in a plot than a witness and reflection point, using his own life to explore larger human and social questions.

Motivations and Traits Shown Through Actions

The speaker's primary motivation is understanding and survival. He repeatedly seeks to make sense of his experiences through writing—in "This is how I scare the dirt," he declares that a pen can be a shovel, implying writing as a tool to combat mortality. His childhood stutter teaches him that speaking is a hard-won badge of honor (chapter 23), driving his later emphasis on voice as currency (chapter 32). He is self-aware and honest about his flaws: in "The poem where I lie about everything" (chapter 11), he catalogs the truths he hides—his parents not loving each other, his grandmother's death, his loneliness—and then admits to the guilt that follows. This pattern shows a man who wears masks but also craves authenticity.

He demonstrates resilience through actions: in "Drowning Fish" (chapter 14), he compares his depression to oxygen-deprived water but resolves not to become another drowning fish. He tells himself it will be okay, speaking directly to a future version of himself who will be grateful. In "Sometimes I'm the mess" (chapter 13), he accepts that he must be both the chaos and the one who cleans up, embracing self-reliance. His defiance appears in poems like "This is how I scare the dirt," where he tells death "Not today," and in "Whoever said a choir" (chapter 46), where he and his father sing Bob Marley loudly to challenge Alzheimer's.

Chronological Arc

The speaker's arc moves from vulnerability and confusion toward empowerment and hope, though not in a straight line. Early poems (chapters 2-5) introduce limitations: he cannot find a word in English to satisfy Mama Saba, he imagines himself as a fragile dandelion (the "Ricky" figure), and he describes his parents' emotional distance. Mid-collection, the speaker confronts deeper pain—his parents' divorce leaves a permanent shadow (chapter 8), love ends without his hearing the bell (chapter 9), and his depression nearly drowns him (chapter 14). Yet even in these low points, he finds small victories: his car breaks down but is fixed in an hour, leading to the conclusion "there is something after every breakdown" (chapter 15).

Toward the end, the speaker shifts toward celebration and resilience. In "Here I am today" (chapter 16), he calls himself living proof that a birthday party can replace a planned funeral. He wishes others victory and happiness (chapters 17, 19), honors his brother and mother (chapters 47-48), and gives advice to a new father (chapter 51). The arc culminates in poems that demand justice and affirm life: "Alternate endings for the black movies" (chapter 37) rewrites tragic films so Black characters survive, and "I want the kind of happiness" (chapter 19) commits to carving joy from daily routines. The speaker ends not with closure but with continued effort—a breath that repeats itself.

Relationships

Parents: The speaker's parents are a source of deep observation. In "My parents" (chapter 7), he notes they maintained a long-distance relationship for thirty years while sharing a house, teaching him that proximity does not equal closeness. His mother's divorce is a stubborn grease fire that left a shadow where her wedding ring once was (chapter 8). Yet his mother also bequeaths him a smile—the first gift she gave him (chapter 48). His father appears most powerfully in "Whoever said a choir" (chapter 46), where they sing together as equals, fighting Alzheimer's through music. The speaker also imagines his father before trauma in "Dear PTSD" (chapter 45), showing a longing for the man he might have been.

Romantic partners: Several poems examine failed or imagined love. In "Love can be a reckless child" (chapter 9), the speaker realizes the relationship ended while he was unaware. In "How" (chapter 26), he asks an ex how she learned to live without him, and she replies that she treated absence as a classroom. He also imagines a future wedding in "A lot like you" (chapter 30), describing a wife he hasn't met yet with striking hope. These relationships reveal the speaker's tendency to be blindsided by endings but also his capacity for longing and idealization.

Family and community: The speaker celebrates his brother Lasalle as "the toughest flower in the mother's garden," a gentle giant who defies myth (chapter 47). The women in his family cook without measuring cups, embodying inherited intuition (chapter 50). Beyond blood, the speaker extends care to a friend about to become a father, advising him to stay present and vulnerable (chapter 51). These relationships anchor the speaker in a web of love and duty that counterbalances the isolation he sometimes feels.

Key Decisions and Consequences

Choosing to write: In "This is how I scare the dirt," the speaker decides that a pen can function as a shovel, metaphorically digging himself out of his own burial. This choice frames the entire collection as an act of survival.
Refusing to be a victim: In "Drowning Fish," he promises himself he won't die in the canal. This decision leads to a practice of breathing through panic and trusting his future self. The consequence is that he continues—he finds a run-on sentence and aligns with its persistence.
Admitting lies: In "The poem where I lie about everything," he finally names his hidden grief. The poem ends with him waking, making breakfast, feeling guilty, and going for a run—small acts of moving forward. The honesty allows the reader to see his humanity.
Forgiveness: In "I once held on to a grudge" (chapter 18), the speaker decides to let go of anger, metaphorically moving from a city of rage to a quiet town of forgiveness. This shift frees him from carrying a burden he can no longer remember the cause of.
Blocking toxic interactions: In "Ode to the block button" (chapter 21), he embraces the digital block as a form of self-protection, declaring that silence can be the most powerful response. This decision reinforces boundaries and prioritizes his well-being.

Theme and Symbol Connections

The speaker's journey ties directly into the book's major themes as listed on the themes page. Each theme is embodied through the speaker's experiences:

Language and Its Limitations : The speaker's search for a word in "Mama Saba asks" and his childhood stutter (chapter 23) both show language as both a tool and a struggle. He learns that English is like a shiny hammer—useful but not all-encompassing.
Defiance and Resilience : This is the speaker's core posture—from telling death "Not today" to singing louder than Alzheimer's. He refuses to be a drowning fish, insists on blooming in shade (chapter 44), and declares that a breakdown leads to something after.
Legacy and Memory : The speaker safeguards memories of his father through song (chapter 46), honors Nipsey Hussle (chapter 6), and imagines alternate endings for Black films to preserve Black lives (chapter 37). He knows a person is still alive if their name is remembered.
Systemic Racism and Violence : Poems like "Instructions for black people" (chapter 39) and "When they say he is black" (chapter 38) directly critique police violence and media narratives. The speaker observes that the system licks its fingers clean and that Black people are given impossible instructions for survival. "Climate Change" (chapter 35) compares gun violence normalization to environmental crisis.
Love and Family : The speaker's relationships with his parents, brother, and imagined future wife all explore love as complicated, enduring, and expressed through actions like cooking (chapter 50) or asking "Have you eaten?" (chapter 49).

Key symbols: The dandelion in "And maybe we all know a 'Ricky'" (chapter 5) represents the speaker's own fragility and the community's hope. The peace lily (chapter 44) symbolizes resilience in adverse conditions. Flight itself is a recurring motif—the speaker learns more about flying from falling and pushing himself up (chapter 12). The run-on sentence in "Drowning Fish" serves as a symbol for persistence even when it would be easy to end.

Questions and Answers

How does the speaker's relationship with language evolve throughout the collection?
The speaker begins with an awareness of language's limits—in "Mama Saba asks," he cannot find an English word for a concept, and in "Throughout most of my childhood," he stutters, making speech a fight. By the end, he commands the reader to "Speak because your voice is currency" (chapter 32), asserting the power of self-expression. He also uses writing as a tool against death ("This is how I scare the dirt"). The arc moves from language as a barrier to language as a weapon and gift.
What role does the speaker's father play in the speaker's identity?
The father is a figure of both distance and connection. In "My parents," the speaker observes his father's emotional remoteness. Later, "Whoever said a choir" shows them bonding over Bob Marley, singing together to defy Alzheimer's. "Dear PTSD" reveals the speaker's curiosity about who his father was before trauma. The father becomes a symbol of resilience—even as his memory fades, he remains present in shared ritual and song.
How does the speaker confront personal depression in "Drowning Fish"?
He uses the metaphor of 1,000 fish drowning due to low oxygen to describe his own sadness. He lists fears he cannot voice—doubts about fatherhood, his father's dementia, self-destructive tendencies. But he explicitly vows not to become another drowning fish. He breathes, panics, cries, and repeats that it will be okay, trusting a future version of himself who will be grateful. The poem ends with him identifying with a run-on sentence that keeps going.
What is the speaker's stance on racial injustice, and how does he express it?
The speaker is unequivocally critical of systemic racism and police violence. In "Instructions for black people," he lists contradictory survival orders that reveal the impossibility of safety. In "When they say he is black," he exposes how official language dehumanizes Black victims. "Alternate endings for the black movies" rewrites tragic outcomes to assert that Black lives deserve survival. He uses irony and direct address to challenge readers, as in the conclusion of "Climate Change," where he labels normalized gun violence a form of climate change.
What is the speaker's view of resilience as demonstrated in the collection?
Resilience is active and often lonely. In "Sometimes I'm the mess," the speaker accepts that he must be both the problem and the solution. In "Here I am today," he calls himself a breath that repeats itself—proof that joy can replace anticipated loss. Resilience is also communal: he cheers for others ("I wish you a checkered flag"), celebrates his brother's strength (chapter 47), and carries his mother's optimism (chapter 48). Ultimately, the speaker sees resilience not as grand triumph but as continued effort—waking up, doing laundry, and treating small acts as celebrations.

For further exploration of the speaker's world, visit the book's main page, the ending explained, or the questions and answers section.