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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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