Elena

“Elena” is an early poem by the Chicana poet Pat Mora. It appears in Mora’s first poetry collection Chants (1984), which explores the experiences of Chicanos and Chicanas, Americans of Mexican descent. In that collection and throughout her work, Mora is interested in the lives of individuals who must negotiate multiple cultures and languages. “Elena” is a persona poem, which presents the words or thoughts of a well-defined speaker who is not the poet. Elena is a woman who grew up in Mexico but moved to the United States with her husband and children. She is determined to learn English because her children increasingly communicate in that language, and Elena wants to understand them and be as close to them as she was back in Mexico. The poem vividly conveys linguistic and psychological challenges that many immigrants face as they adjust to their new life in the United States, especially women with traditional upbringing who must develop determination and strength to emancipate themselves from gender stereotypes.

Poet Biography

Pat Mora was born in 1942 in El Paso, Texas, where her grandparents had moved from Northern Mexico. She grew up in a bilingual family, so she was equally immersed in English and Spanish from an early age.