¶ … Immigrants" by Pat Mora
There are three underlying themes in the poem by Pat Mora entitled "Immigrants." The poem's main purpose is to convey what immigrants experience as they attempt to settle down into their new lives in America. The first theme has to do with the process of assimilation that immigrants try to have their families undergo through here. The second theme has to do with immigrants attempting to retain parts of their old cultures in their new homes. Finally, the third theme has to do with the anxiety immigrants often feel over whether or not their children will be recognized as American citizens.
Mora's most dominant theme within the poem has to do with how immigrants attempt to openly assimilate their families, particularly their children, into
Many instances of assimilation are mentioned here, beginning with the figurative meaning behind wrapping babies in the American flag. In order to successfully turn their babies into full-fledged American citizens, they have them adapt to various aspects of its culture. They have them eat American foods, give them popular American names, buy them well-known American toys, and try to speak to them in English. This is supposed to be accomplished while the children are very young, particularly from the time they are not old enough to walk yet.
Several instances of parallelism are made to reiterate this major theme continuously throughout the poem. Most of these have to do with parallelism of words and phrases. One of the beginning lines mentions about feeding them "mashed hot dogs and apple pie," which are similar in that they are types of American foods. This is parallel to the second and third instances of parallelism. The second instance occurs in the line where it is mentioned about immigrants naming their babies "Bill and Daisy" which are…
Pat Mora -- "Curandera" and "Immigrants" -- are quite different and yet they both express the what it's like to be Latina and they detail experiences that are unique to Latinas in America. "Curandera": A curandera is a woman of Latina ethnicity who practices folk medicine. In the poem, the curandera has bonded and her life has progressed with and is dependent upon nature -- the desert -- even though
Mora and Lim's Success And Failures In Defining American Identity People from different, cultures, countries, and ethnicities have long viewed America as the land of opportunity. Pat Mora and Shirley Geok-Lin Lim offer differing views of what it means to be an American and how they define being an American. Because of their differing ethnic and cultural backgrounds, Mora and Lim conflict in their definitions of American identity. In "Immigrants," Mora
worked tirelessly to understand the literary works of a variety of authors including poets Pat Mora, Shirley Geok-Lim, John Keats, and Robert Frost, and short-story writer DH Lawrence. As we have compared the works of these poets and determined how common themes are shared, and through a deep reading and literature analysis of Lawrence's short, I have been able to explore different writing and analytical approaches that have allowed
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