Elena

Pat Mora’s “Elena” is a persona poem, which means that the perspective and the words in the poem belong to the character, not the poet (for more, see Literary Context). In such a poem, the reader is rarely given any background knowledge about the speaker, whose personality and motivation gradually emerge through her own words. The first piece of information the reader learns is that Elena believes that her “Spanish isn’t enough” (Line 1). Several lines that follow clarify that Elena’s feeling of inadequacy relates to her relationship with her children. In the past, she was able to understand “every word they’d say, / Their jokes, their songs, their plots” (Lines 4-5). This list reveals that she knew them intimately, including their sense of humor and their childlike schemes and fibs. She shared the emotions they expressed in their songs. Elena remembers how she would “smile / listening to [her] little ones” (Lines 2-3), basking in their mutual affection. She recalls them saying “Vamos a pedirle dulces a mamá. Vamos” (Line 6)—“Let’s ask mom for some sweets, c’mon.” She was confident that she would understand their explicit and implicit desires and be able to help them with their needs.

“But that was in Mexico” (Line 7). There is an abrupt shift from Elena’s sweet memories of the past to the present reality, which troubles her. Now that the family has immigrated to the United States, her children “go to American high schools” (Line 8) and “speak English” (Line 9), even at home. Elena is especially bothered by the moments when the family is all together in the evening, and the children chatter in English at “the kitchen table, laugh[ing] with one another” (Line 10), but she cannot understand their jokes like she could before. She cannot share their joy; she cannot connect with them through their humor. Instead, she “stand[s] by the stove and feel[s] dumb, alone” (Line 11). This poignant line reveals how much this lack of connection pains her. She feels isolated and stupid, as if her children had somehow outgrown her and did not care to include her.

Of course, Elena realizes, they are just children who have been brought to a new country and have adopted a new language to bring them closer to new hopes and dreams that America offers. Their English will be better the more they speak it, and their opportunities will be more abundant the better they are able to speak English. Elena realizes this, so she does not insist that her children speak Spanish with her. Instead, she decides to learn English herself in order to protect and stregnthen the bond she has had with them. There is a sense of determination in her simple declarative statement: “I bought a book to learn English” (Line 12). Elena is serious about this. She has a goal, and she has obtained a tool to help her achieve that goal. Sadly, she gets little support. Her frowning husband keeps drinking beer (Line 13), an image that speaks volumes about his patriarchal attitude toward his wife’s desire to improve herself. The modern perspective is brought forth by Elena’s oldest child, who insightfully diagnoses the father’s attitude as based in masculine fear of being outdone by his female counterpart: “Mamá, he doesn’t want you / to be smarter than he is” (Lines 14-15). The implication is not that learning English would make Elena smarter, but that it would show that she is, has always been, smarter than her husband thinks she is, as well as more independent and able to achieve goals without his help. Mora succinctly and vividly sketches out conventional gender relations in a traditional patriarchal marriage: the wife should take care of the household and the children and not waste the money earned by her hardworking husband on something silly, like an English textbook, which probably costs more than a 12-pack of beer. Perhaps Elena’s husband is not quite that narrow-minded; maybe he even values his wife’s free domestic labor which makes it possible for him to do outside work, but he apparently does nothing to encourage or facilitate her ambitious goal.

The goal is ambitious because Elena is “forty” (Line 15), an age at which learning a foreign language is very difficult, especially for a previously monolingual person. This is probably the first time in her life that Elena is making such an effort. As an adult and a mother of adolescent children, she is also more “embarrassed” (Lines 16 and 17) by inevitable mistakes than a younger language learner would be. Such mistakes elicit laughter, which, even when it is free of malice, can be hard to take. It may be Elena’s nervousness that makes her think that everyone—her “children, / the grocer, the mailman” (Lines 17-18)—laughs at her, but expecting others to laugh at you is almost as discouraging as their actual laughter. No wonder, then, that Elena sometimes “lock[s] [her]self in the bathroom” (Line 19) with her English textbook so she can practice “the thick words” in privacy, “softly” (Line 20) so that no one would hear her. For all the difficulty, the lack of encouragement, and the risk of embarrassment, she knows she must keep trying if she wants to preserve her bond with her children and be able to help them in the future. As a mother, she cannot emotionally afford to “be deaf” to their English words (for more on this, see “Being Deaf” in Symbols & Motifs).