Pieces of me as an undergraduate pt. 1

"Of all the Stories My Mother Has Told"

Of all the stories my mother has told,

My favorite is the one where I was born.

In a castle so tall,

This one had walls.

It also had guards and it also had stalls.

In a castle so tall,

My mother threw a ball.

Indeed a celebration, indeed one for all.

In a castle so tall,

I was wrapped in a shawl.

A gift from a guest for entering the world.

In a castle so tall,

I was the star of the show.

A king of tomorrow, a king of gold.

Of all the stories my mother has told,

My favorite is the one where I was born.

Reflection

When I was writing this poem, the injustice that undocumented migrants faced crossing the US-Mexico border was what I had in mind. The ongoing dispute of thwarting migrants from entering the US was something that I remember learning about this semester that inspired me to write this piece. I wanted to show how stories that our parents tell are sometimes watered down or sugar-coated in a way to protect us, the children, from getting hurt and knowing the truth about their loved ones’ past and journey migrating to their destination country.

The poem is written from the perspective of a young child who recalls his mother’s version or tells of how he came into the world. The castle that I speak of repetitively is the detention center the mother and her husband stayed in before they were naturalized years later. The walls represent the wall that Trump Administration built during his presidency in 2016. The little boy believes the walls around the center were to prevent anyone from coming in when in reality, the walls are only one wall that is keeping out the migrants. The guards are the ICE policemen or guardsmen who monitor the migrants in the cages. Technically, in a sense, the cages are also the walls keeping the men separate from the women and children.

In addition, the mention of stalls can be linked to stalls with horses, and usually, monarchs have a stall of horses or a barn with animals. Since the son speaks of his mother calling him a king, it correlates to the son having his own animals at birth. The stalls also represent the different cages that serve as a barrier to separate and lock up animals the same way ICE detained migrants like animals. Moving forward, metaphorically speaking, “the mother threw a ball” was an exaggeration of how ecstatic she was when her son was born. She was grateful that he was alive and breathing. For fear that authorities might take her baby, the mother hides her birth in the camp. She is able to give birth in a bathroom stall, and when she is found by another migrant, that migrant runs away and comes back with a guard and a shawl in her hands and uses that to wrap the baby up.

The baby was the “star of the show” because no one had any idea that his mother was giving birth. So, he came as a surprise. It was inevitable that he would be the star of the show. He is the first baby born in the camp. Like all babies, everyone crowds around the newborn to see what they look like. It is the same way with the baby’s birth. This poem was fun to write. I understand that I should write more and give a little more details of certain parts of the poem, but I just wanted this poem to be a food for thought moment.