Legal Alien

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 everyone around them who are suspect of their Mexican American identity. Mora uses words like “slip” (Line 2), “Smooth” (Line 5), “fluent” (Line 6), and “sliding” (Line 17) to suggest a fluidity in how the speaker moves through life and acceptance of their dual identity. These words contrast with the othering labels people put upon them: “exotic” (Line 9), “inferior” (Line 10), “different” (Line 10), and “alien” (Line 11). These descriptions represent inferred messages the speaker regularly receives about their identity and place in society.

Americans see the speaker as Mexican and Mexicans see them as American, but this is a willful misunderstanding of the speaker who occupies dual identities.