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Elena Pat Mora Analysis

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Even though most people believe that the majority of poems express only emotions such as love, fear, and death, there are also poems from poets that exhort their voices through the poetry of protest who object against various social-political issues that took place during their generation (Ann & Charters, 1052). For example, Pat Mora is one person that speaks up about the issues that Latinos confront in the United States. For instance, in her poem of “Elena,” Mora mentions the difficulties that a monolingual person has to deal with when they have language barriers. In “Elena” Pat Mora describes a story of Elena, a mother, who feels that her Spanish is not sufficient. She begins to remember when she used to be happy, and when she used to understand the jokes, the songs, …show more content…

For instance, when Elena said,“I stand by the stove, and feel dumb, alone” (Mora, 11) it suggested that she began to feel that she was incompetent and she felt poorly about herself, because she was unable to understand the language. Furthermore, when Elena mentions “I’m forty, embarrassed at mispronouncing words” (Mora,16) it emphasizes that Elena was not confident about herself herself enough, because she thought that she was going to be unable to learn English at such a late age. Therefore, she began to be doubt herself a lot. Moreover, when she mentions, “I bought a book to learn English/ for if I stop trying, I will be deaf/when my children need my help,”it suggested that Elena believed that she was useless and worth lessless to her children, because she felt like she was not helping them as she used to when she was in Mexico. Therefore, she decided to learn English in order to be able feel worthy and useful to her

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La Migra is a poem written by Pat Mora about the Mexican - American immigration issue. It’s purpose is to acknowledge the emotions and sentiments of the Mexican immigrants who try to come to the United States illegally. The denotation of the poem’s title means immigration and the connotation is referring to the police officers standing at the Mexico-United States border. The poem is divided into two stanzas to acknowledge immigration through the different perspectives of the illegal immigrant and also through the eyes of the border police. The first stanza is through the perspective of the male border cop, who thinks his power and nonessential items make his superior to the immigrants.

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In this poem, he tells the story of a day in the factory where he worked in. As stated, “At the factory I worked…my boss waved for us to run / ‘Over the fence, Soto’ he shouted, / And I shouted that I was American” (1-7). He tells the story of a time when the border patrol came to the factory he worked at and the boss urged all his workers, which he thinks are all immigrants, to run away. This poem shows us a day in his life as a factory worker and gives us a glimpse of the cultural side of the working-class that he lived in, like in some of his other poems.

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The point is that Latinos that come to America knows the importance to learn English and adapt to this culture promptly, but they also know that their culture would always be inside themselves after all. This poem tells us that it’s not about moving to United States and forget where you came from, but being able to mix both cultures at the same time.

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