Legal Alien

"Sonrisas" by Pat Mora (1986)

The narrator of “Sonrisas” (“Smiles”) describes herself as living “in a doorway / between two rooms.” Like the speaker of “Legal Alien,” she is caught between the two different worlds of America and Mexico. In one room, she describes the sterile environment of an office and the fake smiles (reminiscent of the fake smile in “Legal Alien”) of the quiet professional American women. In the other room, she sees Mexican women laughing and eating, speaking Spanish and authentically living. The narrator of “Sonrisas” is an outsider to the women in either room, being only an observer and never an active participant on either side.

"To Live in the Borderlands" by Gloria Anzaldúa (1987)

In this poem, fellow Chicana poet Gloria Anzaldúa writes about navigating a multifaceted border identity that speaks to the same themes found in “Legal Alien.” She compares living with this complexity to being at a crossroads—a battleground where a Mexican American is both “at home” and a “stranger.” The poem stresses that a person with this heritage must acknowledge both their indigenous ancestry and “the Anglo inside” in order to understand their whole identity, which is also a central message of “Legal Alien.