América

Blanco’s poem centers on the cultural differences between the Cuban community in Miami and mainstream American society. It also shows the beginnings of the process of acculturation, by which people—immigrants, for example—adapt to a new culture. The chosen example is the American celebration of Thanksgiving. The Cuban immigrant family gradually learns about the significance of Thanksgiving in their adopted country and decide to celebrate it themselves—but with a distinctively Cuban twist.

Stanza one uses humor to show one of the first steps the women in the family find themselves taking to adjust to their new environment. It involves peanut butter, a staple of American life that is not widely used in Cuba. The speaker’s Aunt Miriam is very creative in finding uses for this unfamiliar item, which was given to them in five-pound jars every month by the U.S. immigration authorities. In contrast, the boy’s mother is baffled by what she is supposed to do with these jars, until her son’s friend Jeff—the name suggests an American boy—mentioned the magic word “jelly” (Line 9). The reader can infer that the family thus discovered an American staple, the peanut butter and jelly sandwich, just one step in assimilating to American culture. In a poem centered on the cultural experience of America through food, this first stanza signals to the reader just how new the speaker’s family is to American cuisine and cultural traditions, as demonstrated by the mother’s confusion. However, it also demonstrates the family’s adaptability and inventive spirit, as Aunt Miriam finds multiple ways to use the peanut butter before they learn of its intended purpose.

In stanza two, the speaker’s family is presented through their Cuban habits, customs, and culture. The speaker tells the reader that they always ate pork at celebrations, including birthdays, weddings, Christmas, and New Year, and also at Thanksgiving. The family prepares the pork in a variety of ways, hinting at the food’s versatility, and it is accompanied by “cauldrons of black beans” (Line 15) and “fried plantain chips” (Line 16). A plantain is a plant that belongs to the banana family; it is cooked as if it were a vegetable, like a potato. Plantains, particularly fried plantains, are a popular food in Latin America and a specialty in Cuba and Cuban communities in the United States. The detailed description of their typical cuisine communicates to the reader how the family has brought elements of the home culture to America, and they have yet to adapt much to their new culture.

To convey the fact that this family of recent immigrants from Cuba still speak Spanish, the poet inserts the Spanish name “yuca con mojito” (Line 16) in his survey of what his family likes to eat. One of Cuba’s national dishes, it is made by marinating yuca root in garlic, lime, and olive oil. The family gets these items in a store they know as “Antonio’s Mercado” (Line 18) in Miami. In the store, Cuban men in “guayaberas” (Line 19), a type of summer shirt for men, popular in Cuba, stand around insulting U.S. president John F. Kennedy. They blame him for the fact that they had to leave Cuba, and the U.S. government has not succeeded in overthrowing Fidel Castro, the leader of the 1959 Communist revolution. The young boy listens to their complaints but is not impressed. His image of them is grotesque, with the “bile of Cuban coffee and cigar residue / filling the creases of their wrinkled lips” (Lines 21-22), and he thinks they are lying about the wealth they left behind in Cuba, and that they have nothing interesting or important to say.

Stanza three highlights the cultural differences of which the seven-year-old boy is acutely aware. Although he speaks English, his parents do not, and it is obvious to him that his family is very different from the average American family. They do not live in a nice two-story house or go on camping vacations; the girls are not blonde with “hair of gold” (Line 32), and their names are not the Anglo names like Marsha or Peter, but are instead Guadalupe or Lázaro. Nor does the boy’s family resemble the characters they see on popular American television shows, and the speaker is certain that Patty Duke’s family, famous from a popular television show in the 1960’s, does not at all resemble theirs. The last four lines of the stanza return to the Thanksgiving theme. The speaker knows Patty Duke’s family has turkey with cranberry sauce and yams at Thanksgiving, certainly not pork with all the trappings that the Cuban family enjoys. The juxtaposition of cultures betrays how much the speaker as a boy wished for the idealized “typical” American life and traditions as they were depicted on television in the 1970’s.

In stanza four, the young boy is able to convince his family to celebrate Thanksgiving in the traditional American style he has learned from television and at school, where he has learned a mainstream version of American history and culture. Unlike his parents, he has few memories of life in Cuba, none of which are mentioned in the poem, and he does not seem to have the same attachment to their homeland that his parents retain. It is worth noting that the poem is not entirely autobiographical, since the boy is seven in 1970, while Blanco was only two years old at that time and had never been to Cuba. This is a moment where the poet has slightly altered the autobiographical element to fit the poem better.

The boy explains to his “abuelita,” (Line 45) and his parents what he knows about the origins of Thanksgiving and American history and culture. He quotes lines from the song “God Bless America,” and the words of 19th-century American poet Henry Longfellow: “One if by land, and two if by sea” (Line 50) from the poem “Paul Revere’s Ride”. These words refer to a secret signal given by Paul Revere as he rode from Boston to Concord just before the outbreak of the American Revolutionary War. Revere instructed fellow patriots to shine one lantern if British troops were advancing to Concord by land, and two lanterns if they were coming by water.

The boy also alludes in Line 51 to the famous story of George Washington’s felling of his father’s favorite cherry tree when he was six years old. (When confronted by his angry father, Washington said that he could not tell a lie and therefore admitted what he had done.) Other important aspects of the American story the speaker alludes to are the Boston Tea Party of 1773, and Emma Lazarus’s famous poem, “The New Colossus,” which he actually misquotes. (The passage reads, “Give me your tired, your poor, / Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.”) The entire poem is inscribed on a bronze plaque in the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty. The boy also mentions “liberty and justice for all” (Line 54), which is part of the Pledge of Allegiance. After this persistent show of enthusiasm for American culture from the boy, the family finally agrees to have turkey as well as pork at Thanksgiving.

In stanza five, the final stanza of the poem, the narrative reaches its climax with the Thanksgiving celebration at the family’s apartment. The occasion turns out to be an odd mixture of American and Cuban food and customs: a hybrid, bicultural Thanksgiving. The speaker’s grandmother prepares the turkey even though she does not really want to, or as he says, “as if committing an act of treason” (Line 59). Appropriately, it is the boy who gives a “bilingual blessing” (Line 71) but the family is still wary of what they are about to eat, passing the turkey around “like a game of Russian Roulette” (Line 73) and greeting the pumpkin pie with a distinct lack of enthusiasm. Uncle Berto sums up the occasion when, dissatisfied with the turkey, he gives it more flavor by adding fried pork drippings, which is what he is more used to, making it a kind of Cuban American meal; he is also bold enough to try the cranberry sauce, which he refers to as “esa mierda roja” (Line 76), or, “that red shit”. The meal and new traditions are abandoned when the Cuban coffee, which is much stronger than American coffee, is served, and the family starts dancing the merengue (to the voice of Celia Cruz, a popular Cuban American singer). The conclusion is celebratory, , and the family almost forgets that they are in America rather than Cuba, which aptly suggests how they are straddling, not always comfortably, two very different cultures. Blanco ends the poem on a dark and somber note, when the family “remembered / it was 1970 and 46 degrees / in América” (Lines 83-85), with “in América” (Line 85) standing out, alone on its own line. As if emerging from the memories of a past version of their life in Cuba, and landing again in America, the final lines of the poem draw back from their rich celebration as the family quietly repositions the furniture and “an appropriate darkness” (Line 87) filled the room. With the departure of the speaker’s uncle, in the last line, a sense of loneliness pervades, as old traditions ultimately yield to the reality of the present.