Read the poem " Identity " by Angela C. Trudell Vasquez then answer the question below. Provide text evidence and explain how th
at evidence supports your claim.
White-Mexican looks like a Latina,
not my label
a question
from a Guatemalan student
who's come undone
in my ESL class,
doesn't get my kind
I try to describe
how I grew up
in Caucasian corn country
surrounded by houses
on cul-de-sacs
that all looked the same,
how we were alone
in a town of 5000,
one black family,
one Indian family,
one Asian family,
and one household of Mexicans,
no two, us and the Renterias
to whom we were related by marriage
before and after my divorce,
and they were mixed;
still, it was a good living,
happy in our cocooness,
our oneness,
separated by money
one direction
color on the other:
classes, classes, classes,
day and night
we took lessons:
piano, jazz, tap, ballet,
the dance team, trumpet,
trombone, tennis, Finishing School,
and one awful summer golf;
Christened, Confirmed, Cathechismized;
it all cut me in several places,
molding of head and heart
making me ultrasensitive,
then and now,
an observer of the outside,
an outsider among my own kind,
my very shade,
mysterious aloof
black haired beauty
who can't speak Spanish,
living among blue eyed dyed blond bombshells,
who held up her head higher
because she's shy not stuck-up,
understood, undenied, sacrificed to at any price
by my beloved little brown parents
who taught me well
gave up so much
so their daughters could shine
and they'd swell with pride
at the life they had given us,
on Sundays we basked
in mutual admiration after mass
singing our church songs while making breakfast,
according to the unspoken doctrine in our house of:
fast first eat later after communion,
we intruded with our Mexican music
bellowing out the open windows
the smell of bacon frying,
pancakes baking, coffee
and eggs scrambled to order
it wafted out on beautiful summer mornings
out of our house in Pleasant Hill, Iowa,
perched on the highest spot
one could reach on the East Side of the street
for first and second generation immigrants.
Question: How do the social and historical contexts affect the meaning and role of identity in poetry from the United States?
