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Esme Vazquez

Professor Bruce

English 307

April 16, 2022

Literary Analysis : Pat Mora

“Two Worlds”, “1910”, and “Abuelita’s Magic” by Pat Mora displays Mexican

American culture beautifully through the eyes of a woman. I looked at this literature through the

lens of feminism as well as through a cultural lens. All three poems introduce the readers to three

different characters, all strong and independent feminine characters who display three different

situations though all of them culturally connected. Pat Mora, being of Mexican American decent,

allows readers who aren’t aware of the true identity of Mexican-American culture an insight. I

was able to make a personal connection to these three poems. I was able to picture my family

and how these situations are at times culturally engrained. “Bi-Lingual, Bi-Cultural” (Mora, 39).

Being of two different cultures, speaking two different languages. Could be any language, any

culture, race, gender. Being a female born with Spanish that came from Mexico, a Spanish

language that comes from the roots of castellano and raised with different dialects and changes.

A language that has come to be looked down upon consistently throughout the times. For this

literary analysis, I am going to delve into a deeper space between these poems. Is Pat Mora

introducing cultural feminism within her poems? It could be quite possible due to the way these

poems are written and how the stories within the poems are told to us while staying contained

within a box of the culture it’s trying to break free from.

The poem “1910” reads in third person about Doña Luz, a woman who the town looks up

to as leader of the community. In Mexican culture, Hispanic communities also known as a

Vecinidad hold the elders of that community to a higher standard. They are meant to be respected

no matter what, and at times this could all the while be frustrating but as well as a place of

comfort because more likely than not they have the answer to what ever question you might

have. “Timid villagers stepped aside for the judge’s mother, Doña Luz” (Mora 30). This poem is

rather interesting for the fact that it doesn’t just focus on the authority of Doña Luz, but it

continues to tell a story. “When she crossed the Rio Grande to El Paso…Into Upton’s Five-and-

Dime” (Mora 30). This line resonated with me for the fact that the Rio Grande is a dangerous

river where many Mexican immigrant attempt to cross in order to get onto American land.

According to Molly Hennessy-Fiske of The Los Angeles Times, “More than 130,000 migrants

have already been encountered there by U.S. Customs and Border Protection since October.”

That alone is an astonishing number of migrants attempting to cross a river that has been known

to take many lives. Continuing on with the poem we are then confronted with a situation many

migrants from a multitude of races are familiar with, racism.

“Who walked out, back straight, lips quivering, and slowly removed her shawl and

gloves, placed them on the sidewalk with the other shawls and shopping bags “You

Mexicans can’t hide things from me,” Upton would say. “Thieves. All thieves” (30).

Suzanne Gamboa, a writer for NBC News, quotes a professor from UC Berkeley “There is an

ingrained perception among many white people that all Latinos are foreign no matter how long

they’ve been in the United States or how “assimilated” they are.” That is exactly what Doña Luz

is facing wether is may seem that way to others or not. To be stripped of native clothes because

you’re a suspicious individual. We see this now years later after. Being a person of color is not
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rare, but very common in the United States. The judgmental stares and glares you receive from

others, the automatic suspicion some gain because of the way they look. An example I can think

of similar to this is when an Albertsons near my middle school started requiring us to leave our

backpacks at the front of the store or else they’d chase after you to take the backpack, while they

allowed several Caucasian students inside the store and left them alone. We see the end of the

poem with a ending that oozes an immense sense of pride within Doña Luz. The prideful and in a

way a very feminist kind of attitude. “She walked, chin high, never watching her feet, on the

black beams and boards, still smoking that had been Upton’s Five-and-Dime” (30). Although I

wasn’t able to find the presence of a Five-and-Dime, I was able to feel the sense of pride that

Doña Luz must have felt watching that place burn to ground after humiliating her and other

women of color. A sort of justice was made.

In “Abuelita Magic” we get to see the love of a mother as well as the role of the

grandmother in Mexican culture. We see this during the scene where Abuelita took initiative to

help out, “The abuelita wakes,, shakes her head, finds a dried red chile, slowly shakes the

wrinkled pod so the seeds rattle” (Mora, 59). This allows us to see an insight into the feminine

side of Mexican culture, Dr. Najwa Abdulkareem Khalid from the University of Baghdad, the

mentions that “Mora's poetry has come to symbolize motherly love, care, nurture and

tenderness” (Khalid, 111). Femininity in Mexican culture is almost as potent as the machismo

that courses through the culture as well. In an interview Pat Mora talks about family saying

“Being Mexican American, I come from a culture in which family is very important, and the

metaphor of family is very important to me, our family in this country, our family on the planet.”

Mexican-American culture really revolves around family, the idea that no matter what your

family is meant to come first. We see this with “Abuelita Magic” as in the poem it mentions the
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curing of both children with sleep, the abuelita being able to put her daughters well being and

sleep ahead of hers in order to help her out with the baby. The love that a mother has for their

children in order to give them everything and help them as much as they can. It also see the side

of the culture that heavily depends on nature in daily life, something as simple as a guajillo

pepper, which are extremely important in Mexican culture, can help the family. It allows us to

see that connection with nature instead of being man vs. nature. According to Dr. Najwa

Abdulkareem Khalid, they state that “Ecofeminism establishes a close relationship between

women and nature in the sense that both are victims of the oppression of the patriarchal society.”

This correlates with the previous mentions of machismo within Mexican and Mexican-American

culture. We see the continuous theme of a man only being mentioned in that negative

connotation of ‘1910.’ Being confined into this tightly knit box that your ancestors have made

for you to follow without big changes is third to break from, even when you’re not considered

truly from that culture as being apart of another culture suddenly becomes weaponized.

“Two Worlds” was a poem that I thought was beautifully and very accurately crafted. It

speaks true to the the world of an individual born into a Mexican family, but in America where

you’re divided in half between two distinct cultures. Georgina Guzman, a professor of California

State University of Channel Islands states that Pat Mora is a self-professed nepantla poet

[nahuatl word meaning in between] who is attuned to the liminality, vexing feelings, and

political choices that arise from Latina/os’ experiences” as well that “Mora’s poems explore how

many Chicano’s experience nepantla—for despite obtaining an education and ascending into the

middle class, they still feel in between cultural, economic, and linguistic worlds” (Guzman 460

& 466). “Two Worlds” is an interesting poem because we aren’t seeing the story from a third
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person point of view. It’s almost like its being told the story in the form of someone venting to

you. All things a person who is from two different cultures can definitely relate to.

“American but hyphenates hyphenated, viewed by anglos as perhaps exotic, perhaps

inferior, definitely different, viewed by Mexicans as alien (their eyes say, “you make speak

Spanish but you’re not like me”)”(Mora 39).

Kathleen Dudden Rowlands, in her article “The influence of Pat Mora” interpreted it as “to both

cultures, she is “a handy token/ sliding back and forth/between the fringes of both worlds.”

Border people with hyphenated cultures assimilate into the cultures they inhabit more rapidly,

perhaps, than those cultures are able to assimilate border people” (Rowlands 23). Though I

wouldn’t personally use the word, border people, I interpreted it as Mexican-Americans being

seen as something foreign in the eyes of both of their cultures. They’re seen as someone who

doesn’t belong to either culture, they’re an outlier. “An American to Mexicans a Mexican to

Americans” this line made me take a step back and recognize that in so many ways it was right.

There’s a constant cultural joke within the Mexican-American youth that is so common, it goes

like ‘it you go to Mexico and they know you’re from America you’re 10x times more attractive

because you have paper’. It’s a sad joke that not only objectifies the person being the butt of the

joke, as well as proving the point that they don’t really see us as an equal because we’re different

than them. “Between the fringes of both worlds…by masking the discomfort of being pre-

judged.” Being judged for the fact that you might not be able to keep up in a conversation with

someone from Mexico or fully be able to translate your thoughts into words because your mother

tongue is lost from the lack of practice and teaching. You’re stuck wandering around in the
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between of both cultures being judged by both, being excluded by both not understanding where

you belong but taking pride in being both.

“Two Worlds”, “1910”, and “Abuelita’s Magic” by Pat Mora displays Mexican

American culture through the eyes of a woman. I took the opportunity to look at this literature

through the lens of feminism as well as through a cultural lens. All three poems introduce the

readers to three different characters, all strong and independent feminine characters who display

three different situations though all of them culturally connected. I made a personal connection

to these three poems that were culturally close to me. Carmen Garcia Navarro talked about

Mexican immigration that really felt that it intertwined amazingly with these culturally dense

poems “la historia de la inmigracion de millones de latino americanos y, en concreto, de

mexicanos, esta plagada de circunstancias que han hecho que muchos de estos inmigrantes

hayan visto disminuida, si no totalmente perdida, su herencia y su liberta cultural”(Garcia 51).

Which translates to “The history of the immigration of millions of Latin Americans and,

specifically, of Mexicans, is plagued by circumstances that have meant that many of these

immigrants have seen their heritage and cultural freedom diminished, if not totally lost.” For this

literary analysis, I attempted to delve into a deeper space between these poems. Several questions

I asked myself was is Pat Mora introducing cultural feminism within her poems?And came. To

the conclusion that, yes, in these poems she introduces cultural feminism and the double

standards that are held within the culture. A culture that holds its people in a box that can’t seem

to hold Mexican-American’s as they are stuck in an in between like world.

Works Cited

Dudden Rowlands, Kathleen. “The Influence of Pat Mora How–and Why–Literacy Becomes

Political.” Pat Mora, 2007, https://www.patmora.com/images/articles-rowlands.pdf.

Garcia Navarro, Carmen. “La frontera difusa: el cuerpo desterrado y el cuerpo deseado en la

poesía de Pat Mora.” Confluencia (Greeley, Colo.), vol. 22, no. 2, Department of

Hispanic Studies, University of Northern Colorado, 2007, pp. 50–61

Guzmán, Georgina. “Healing the Affective Anemia of the University: Middle-Class Latina/os,

Brown Affect, and the Valorization of Latina Domestic Workers in Pat Mora’s Nepantla

Poetry.” Latino Studies, vol. 15, no. 4, Palgrave Macmillan UK, 2017, pp. 458–75,

https://doi.org/10.1057/s41276-017-0087-6.

Hennessy-Fiske , Molly. “Hundreds of Migrants Cross the Rio Grande Nightly: 'We All Came

with Dreams'.” Los Angeles Times, Los Angeles Times, 22 Mar. 2021,

https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2021-03-22/hundreds-of-migrants-cross-

this-stretch-of-the-rio-grande-nightly.

James, and Pat Mora. “An Interview with Pat Mora.” Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy,

vol. 46, no. 2, International Reading Association, 2002, pp. 183–183.

Najwa A. Khalid. “Cultural Ecofeminism in Pat Mora’s Poetry.” ‫مجلة اآلداب‬, vol. 1, no. 136,

University of Baghdad, 2021, https://doi.org/10.31973/aj.v1i136.1027.