Crossing Into a New Country
Consider the following poems that speak to the immigrant experience. Are they expressing something universal, or are they too constrained by the specific experience of migrating to the United States? In what ways do they relate to the idea of thresholds and liminal spaces?
- Emma Lazarus | “The New Colossus” (1883)
- Adrienne Rich | “Prospective Immigrants Please Note” (1963)
- Marilyn Chin | “We Are Americans Now, We Live in the Tundra” (1987)
- Adrian Castro | “The Sound of One Immigrant Clapping” (2005)
- Richard Blanco | “Mother Country” (2019)
A mother stands with one foot on a plane to America and one still on Cuban ground, clutching a single suitcase that holds her wedding veil, goodbye letters, and a jar of dirt from her own backyard. Richard Blanco's 'Mother Country' catches the moment all five poems circle: the threshold an immigrant can never fully cross — or uncross.
Key concepts
- Liminal Space
- The in-between state of being no longer in your old life but not yet settled in the new — the immigrant lives in it longest; Castro's speaker needs 'years of forgetting' before he can say 'this is now my home.'
- The Threshold
- The doorway as the recurring image of migration — a line that, once crossed, changes you: Lazarus's 'golden door,' Rich's literal door, Blanco's mother gripping a doorknob she'll never turn again.
- Assimilation And Its Cost
- Becoming part of the new country while losing pieces of the old — Chin's speaker declares 'We are Americans now' only after bidding 'Farewell my ancestors,' arrival and loss in one breath.
- Code-switching
- Moving between languages or cultural modes, often mid-sentence; Castro's lines slide between English and Spanish, so the poem's texture sounds like a mind living in two tongues at once.
What to know
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01
The door is the spine of the whole set — Lazarus's 'golden door,' Rich's literal door, Castro's 'portal,' Blanco's clutched doorknob — so migration here is defined less by the journey than by the single threshold that splits a life into before and after.
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