Pat Mora‘s “Legal Alien” from the collection Chants describes her own predicament as she was an American born to Mexican parents who settled in Texas. Texas is a city that borders on Mexico. Apart from being a writer, Pat Mora is also a cultural preservationist as she endeavours to document the lives of Mexican Americans and U.S. Latinas and Latinos through varying genres.(Wikipedia) “For a variety of complex reasons,” Mora explains, “anthologized American literature does not reflect the ethnic diversity of the United States. I write, in part because Hispanic perspectives need to be part of our literary heritage; I want to be part of the validation process. I also write because I am fascinated by the pleasure and power of words. “The poem “Legal Alien” is such a tribute to these diaspora and more significantly to her own state of identity crisis.

Bi-lingual, Bi-cultural,
able to slip from “How’s life?”
to “Me’stan volviendo loca,”
able to sit in a paneled office
drafting memos in smooth English,
able to order in fluent Spanish
at a Mexican restaurant,
American but hyphenated,

Though she is an American citizen established by the law, she feels like an alien as she is constantly singled out for her roots.…