Homecoming

Alvarez uses one stanza to encompass the 64 lines of “Homecoming.” Many of the lines are enjambed, meaning that they end in the middle, rather than at the end. The speaker describes their personal experience of returning home to the Dominican Republic for a wedding after moving away to the United States.

The first sentence of the poem establishes the location and occasion. The speaker is attending the wedding of their cousin, Carmen, to an American named Dick, at their uncle’s “finca” (Line 2), a Spanish word for a ranch. Alvarez also includes the word “rancho” (Line 20) later in the poem, which is closer to the English word and means the same thing. The main language of the poem is English, assuming a monolingual English-speaking audience (one that probably does not speak Spanish).

Alvarez makes the bilingual elements easy to understand, as well as subtly indicating that the speaker travels across borders, and the sea, to attend their cousin’s wedding. The speaker aims to make non-Spanish speakers comfortable by using only a few simple Spanish words, reflecting how the speaker’s uncle wants to make the groom’s family from Minnesota comfortable. The speaker’s uncle is referred to as “Tio” (Line 7), the Spanish word for uncle.