Adventure of the American Mind

Poetry from Latino and Hispanic Authors

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Pat Mora

"Legal Alien" (from Chants)

--Bi-lingual, Bi-cultural,
able to slip from "How's life?"
to "Me'stan volviendo loca,"
able to sit in a paneled office
drafting memos in smooth English,
able to order in a fluent Spanish
at a Mexican restaurant,
American but hyphenated,
viewed by Anglos as perhaps exotic,
perhaps inferior, definitely different,
perhaps inferior, definitely different,
(their eyes say, "You may speak
Spanish but you're not like me"
an American to Mexicans
a Mexican to Americans. . .

Pat Mora was born in El Paso Texas in 1942, in a primarily Spanish-speaking family. She has since been an activist for bilingual education. She has received critical acclaim for her works that portray the cultural diversity and visual beauty of the Southwest as well as themes of identity, especially of woman and "earth mother." Woven throughout her poetry are images drawn from her own experiences as a bi-lingual, bi-cultural woman from the Southwest desert, portraying her native traditions and giving voice to both herself and a cultural place to Mexican-Americans.