Legal alien by pat mora pdf

The poetic speaker’s identity as an outsider or “other” is the central theme of “Legal Alien.” Marked as “other” by their existence as “American but hyphenated” (Line 8), the speaker occupies a unique—and therefore misunderstood—category.

“Othering” refers to when a society’s dominant group subjugates a minority group by stigmatizing them as “other,” which leads to discrimination against the minority group. In this case, the speaker is othered on both sides of the border, never finding a comfortable place to express their dual identity.

However, Mora does not seem to suggest that the speaker is the one having an identity crisis.

Instead, it is everyo