“The Island Within” is a poem that deals with themes of immigration, exile, and a lost homeland. Many of these kinds of poems also engage with topics like personal identity, personal history, and the refugee experience. “The Island Within” is one example of an American immigrant poem, like those that poet Li-Young Lee has also written. Li-Young Lee is an American poet who was born in Indonesia to exiled parents from China. He settled in the United States as a young child. When analyzing the literary context of “The Island Within,” looking to contemporaries also writing about exile, immigration, and identity can be illuminating.

The poems in this literary tradition often focus on the stories of individuals who have left their homelands, often for the United States. The writers of these poems and stories often employ two lenses that engage two worlds. These worlds consist of the one they call home, or, the world in which they were born or to which they are closely tied through immigrant parents, and a new world in which they find themselves trying to make a life, like America. The poems often incorporate two languages.