América

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1998

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Poem Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Literary Devices

Further Reading & Resources

Related Poems

“One Today” by Richard Blanco (2013)

“One Today” is the poem Blanco wrote and performed for the second inauguration of President Barack Obama in January 2013. It emphasizes the unity of the United States, made up of many different elements. In that sense it is thematically similar to “América,” which presents a radical difference between two cultures, but explores the shared experience generations of immigrants have faced in negotiating and accepting assimilation into American culture, while retaining cultural traditions.

“El Florida Room“ by Richard Blanco (2012)

As in “América,” Blanco looks back to a special room in the house that his mother called “El Florida”; it had a very attractive view from the window; he would sit there for hours, watching television and becoming a Clint Eastwood fan; his father would listen to Elvis Presley records and his mother learned to dance, all in that room. The poem is an example of Blanco’s nostalgia and longing for a place to call home; he is looking back from his adopted home in Maine to the many years he spent in Florida.

“Contemplations at the Virgin de la Caridad Cafetería, Inc.” by Richard Blanco (1998)

As in “América,” Blanco looks back nostalgically to his childhood in Miami. La Caridad was a bodega (small grocery store) that he used to visit. It was named after Our Lady of Charity, the patroness of Cuba. Blanco here remembers the cafeteria, and relies on nostalgia as does “América.” However, the poem presents a contrast in style and is unusual for Blanco, since it is primarily written in rhyming quatrains rather than free verse.

“Immigrant Picnic” by Gregory Djanikian (1999)

Like “América,” this is a poem about immigrants adjusting to an American holiday celebration. In this case, it is not Thanksgiving but the Fourth of July. As in “América,” it is a younger member of the family who understands America better than the parents; the latter get American idioms wrong and have to be corrected. The theme of nostalgia is also present, as in “América,” when the speaker remembers other locations he has known in the Middle East.

Further Literary Resources

The History of Cuba by Clifford L. Staten (2005)

This history of Cuba provides useful insight to the conflict that drove Blanco’s family from Cuba, as Staten covers its earliest period as a Spanish colony and then its wars of independence in the nineteenth century. In the twentieth century, the emphasis is placed on the Castro era and Cuba’s difficult relationship with the United States.

Enchanted Air: Two Cultures, Two Wings by Margarita Engle (2015)

Engle is a Cuban American poet and novelist who was born in the United States to a Cuban mother. In this memoir in verse, she looks back on her childhood in Los Angeles in the 1950s and 1960s and her Cuban heritage. It is both a coming-of-age story and an excursion into Cuba’s past that has some similarity with Blanco’s experience.

Havana USA: Cuban Exiles and Cuban Americans in South Florida, 1959-1994 by Maria Cristina Garcia (1996)

Garcia was a refugee from Cuba who was raised in Miami. In this book she explores the migration of nearly a million Cubans to the United States during a period of thirty-five years. Her examination of the evolution of Cuban American identity provides much insight into the cross-cultural forces that shaped Richard Blanco’s experience of America and his family’s attachment to the Cuba they had left.