LIFE

      Mora was born, raised, and educated in El Paso, graduating from Texas Western College (now UTEP) in 1963.  (She also has a master’s degree from UTEP, 1967.) She has written for adults as well as in a variety of children’s genres, including picture books, biography, and folklore (two books of Mayan folktales). Her books have been translated into a number of languages.  Common themes in her work include the desert as a strong, independent woman; borders as bridges or places of healing; Mexican-American culture; and nature. 

Confetti

      Confetti (1995) was Mora’s first poetry collection for children.  The poems present the desert southwest through the eyes of a young Chicana. In 2006, it was republished in Spanish.  She said she wrote it after an Ohio librarian asked her why she wrote poems for adults but never for children (Mermann-Jozwiak 142).

      Mora says of her blend of English and Spanish, “There is subversion in the use of Spanish, consciously,” but at the same time, she works in the editing process to make sure there are contextual clues so that the inclusion of Spanish doesn’t prevent readers from understanding her poems (Mermann-Jozwiak 143).  She recalls as a child speaking Spanish to her grandmother and aunt at home, but not wanting her schoolmates to know she spoke Spanish because it was associated with being different, being identified as poor and uneducated (Mora 40).

       She says of her writing, “I want to give to others what writers have given me, a chance to hear the voices of people I will never meet. . . . I write because I’m curious. . . . Writing is a way of finding out how I feel about anything and everything.” (Mora 40)  and to help “Mexican Americans take their rightful place in American literature.”

      The poems in Confetti appeal to the child (and adult) reader through their imagery and play with language – they are often deceptively simple, but use several poetic techniques:

·       Alliteration (“Sun Song”)

·       Synesthesia (“Colors Crackle, Colors Roar”; “Words as Free as Confetti”

·       Onomatopoeia (“Colors Crackle, Colors Roar”)

·       Internal rhyme (“Colors Crackle, Colors Roar”)

Several poems present unusual sorts of creators – the woodcarver Don Luis who discovers the animal sleeping in a piece of wood (“Purple Snake”); the baker (panadero) who works his magic with dough (“Mexican Magician”).

      “Confetti” has several uses in these poems: the sugar covering on cookies (“Mexican Magician”), showers of actual confetti from the festival (“Dancing Paper”), and words themselves (“Words, Free as Confetti”).  The last poem seems to be a way into her goals for the collection as a whole.

SOURCES:  Elisabeth Mermann-Jozwiak and Nancy Sullivan, “Interview with Pat Mora,” MELUS 28, 2 (Summer 2003) 140-50; Pat Mora, “A Letter to Gabriela, a Young Writer,” English Journal 79, 5 (September 1990) 40-42; “Patricia Mora,” Contemporary Authors Online, The Gale Group, 2002.  

A. Waller Hastings
Professor of English
Northern State University
Aberdeen, SD  57401

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