Pat mora immigrants

Interpreting Pat Mora’s “Immigrants” Let’s think about interpreting a short poem by a contemporary poet, Pat Mora. Pat Mora of Mexican American descent, Pat Mora was born in 1942 in El Paso, Texas. She writes poetry, nonfiction, and children’s books that explore the border between Mexico and America, emphasizing its cultural diversity and flexible bilingual language. A energetic advocate of the pleasure of reading books, which she calls “bookjoy,” Mora supports several literacy initiatives and founded what she calls “Children’s Day, Book Day, El dia de los ninos, El dia de los libros,” a literacy celebration often know as Día.

Immigrants

wrap their babies in the American flag, feed them mashed hot dogs and apple pie, name them Bill and Daisy, buy them blonde dolls that blink blue eyes or a football and tiny cleats before the baby can even walk, speak to them in thick English, hallo, babee, hallo. whisper in Spanish or Polish when the babies sleep, whisper in a dark parent bed, that dark parent fear, “Will they like our boy, our girl, our fine american boy, our fine american girl?”

Perhaps most readers will agree that the poem expresses or dramatizes a desire, attributed to “immigrants,” that their child grow up in an Anglo mode. (Mora is not saying that all immigrants have this desire; she has simply invented one speaker who offers details about immigrants. Reader Jones may say that Mora says all immigrants have this desire, but that is Jones’s interpretation.) For this reason, the parents call their children Bill and Daisy (rather than, say, José and Katarzyna) and give them blonde dolls and a football (rather than dark-haired dolls and a soccer ball). Up to this point, the parents seem a bit silly in their mimicking of Anglo ways. The second part of the poem, however, gives the reader a more interior view of the parents, and brings out the fear, hope, and worried concern that lie behind their behavior: Some unspecified “they” may not “like / our boy, our girl.” Who are “they”? Most readers will probably agree that “they” refers to native-born citizens, especially the blonde, blue-eyed “all-American” Anglo types that until recently dominated the establishment in the United States.

By reviewing the ideas raised by the poem, we are well on our way to creating an interpretation of it. But it is crucial to reread the poem and continue to interpret it, developing a more sophisticated understanding of its ideas.

We can raise further questions about the interpretation of the poem.

· Exactly what does the poet mean when Mora says that immigrants “wrap their babies in the American flag”? Are we to take this literally? If not, how are we to take it?

· Why must the parent’s whisper the last lines of the poem? Why can’t they speak them loudly? Why are they whispered in a “dark parent bed?” What is the significance of that location?

· Why is the word “american” in the last two lines not capitalized? Is Mora imitating the nonnative speaker’s uncertain grasp of English punctuation? (If so, why does Mora capitalize “American” in the first line and “Spanish” and “Polish” later in the poem?) Or, is she perhaps implying some mild reservation about becoming 100 percent American, some suggestion that, in changing from Spanish or Polish to “American,” there is a loss?

A reader might seek out Mora and ask her why she didn’t capitalize “american” in the last line, but Mora might not be willing to answer, or she might not give a straight answer, or she might say that she doesn’t really know why—it just seemed right when she wrote the poem. Most authors do, in fact, take this last approach. When they are working as writers, they work by a kind of creative instinct, a kind of feel for the material. Later, they can look critically at their writing, but that’s another sort of experience.

To return to our basic question: What characterizes a good interpretation? The short answer is evidence and especially evidence that seems to cover all relevant issues. In an essay, it is not enough merely to assert an interpretation. Your readers don’t expect you to make an airtight case, but, because you are trying to help readers to understand a work—to see a work the way you do—you are obliged to

· offer reasonable supporting evidence,

· explain how the evidence develops your ideas, and

· take account of what might be set forth as counterevidence to your thesis.

Of course, your essay may originate with an intuition or an emotional response, a sense that the work is about such and such, but this intuition or emotion must then be examined, and it must stand a test of reasonableness. Your readers may not be convinced that your interpretation is right or true, but they must feel that the interpretation is plausible and in accord with the details of the work, rather than, say, highly eccentric and irreconcilable with some details.