elena

Sebastian Martinez

Professor Corona

English 102

I responded to this poem on an emotional level because I understand what the speaker is going through. Coming from a Hispanic family I can understand that the mother feels inadequate for not knowing English well. The first line itself “my Spanish is not enough” invokes a sense of desperation that she feels for not being able to communicate with her children in English. At first I thought that line would talk about how her children might not know Spanish, and that this upsets the mother because maybe they didn’t really care about their heritage all that much. I also really understand her desire to better herself by improving her English, as many of the women in my family have attempted to do the same with varying degrees of success. It’s not easy, which is why I sympathize with Elena she goes as far as locking herself in her bathroom because she feels that she is losing her children, all because she doesn’t speak the language that they’re more comfortable with. What is sad is how she mentions the times before English started becoming the primary language of the household. How Elena would listen to her children laugh, sing, joke, and be able to understand every word of it but not she can’t. How her husband didn’t bother to help comfort her or have any real opinion on the matter. What is downright depressing is the way that the story is written, many of the problems Elena faces seem small but all of those little things accumulate. Her isolation while making dinner, the casual laughter of her children and the mailman which, at first, do not seem harmful, but the fact that Elena was trying her hardest to learn a new language but was laughed at severely discouraged her. She is scared that she is losing them, “I will be deaf when my children need my help” gave me the impression that if something happened to them at school or if one of them was sick, she wouldn’t be able to help because she didn’t know English and none of her children were old enough to know how to handle situations like that.