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Discussion Questions
Xiomara was delivered via caesarean section fifty minutes after her twin brother, Xavier, was born. Discuss the symbolism of this scenario from Mami’s point of view .
The only pieces of prose in the novel are assignments that Xiomara has written for Ms. Galiano’s English class. Compare and contrast Xiomara’s prose style to her poetry style; what do the differences in style reveal about Xiomara’s personality?
Write a character sketch of Xiomara’s mother from the perspective of Caridad , Xiomara’s oldest friend. Focus on the elements of Mami’s character that Xiomara might find difficult to see.
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Discovering Self Worth through Spoken Word in "The Poet X" Olivia F. Vega 11th Grade
In Elizabeth Acevedo’s young adult novel, The Poet X, fifteen-year old Dominican-American Xiomara Batista describes her aspirations and personal life experiences in the form of poetic verse. Through her narration the reader learns that Xiomara’s relationship with her mother is strained due to her mother’s strict expectations for how she should behave as a young woman. Xiomara is treated inferiorly to her twin brother and routinely sexualized and objectified by the men in her community, including her own father, causing her to feel doubtful when a boy named Aman treats her with respect throughout their budding romance. It is not until Xiomara is encouraged to join the school slam poetry club that she begins to realize the empowerment that she can attain by speaking the poetry she writes, aloud. Xiomara’s self-expression through spoken word poetry reflects her desire to be heard and respected for her intelligence and ideas rather than objectified for her body. Acevedo’s portrayal of Xiomara’s self-discovered strength subverts traditional understandings of a coming of age narrative as Xiomara is a female protagonist who forms an identity based entirely on her own skills and talent without the assistance of a male figure.
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Elizabeth Acevedo
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Xiomara ’s family is extremely religious, and she grew up spending much of her free time at her local Catholic church. As Xiomara grows and begins to come of age, however, religion starts to look far less meaningful and fun. Instead, Xiomara recognizes that the ideas that Father Sean preaches about are meant to keep her, as a young woman, in line—and in many cases, discourage her from ever voicing the doubts that she has about God and Christianity in general. Importantly, The Poet X doesn’t try to make the case that religion is unequivocally bad or oppressive, even though it often seems that way to Xiomara. Instead, the novel proposes that part of a young person’s coming-of-age journey should necessarily include asking questions about the belief systems that they were raised with, and ultimately figuring out how to combine those teachings with their own personal beliefs.
Throughout her life, Xiomara has been told that she’s a very special gift from God. Mami never wanted to marry and instead wanted to become a nun, but she had to marry Papi in order to move to the United States. It took years for them to conceive, during which time Mami saw herself as a failure. Being finally blessed with twins is, in Mami’s eyes, proof of her own success and of God’s goodness—though for Xiomara, it feels like she has to constantly strive to earn her right to exist and live up to being a blessing. Part of the reason that Xiomara feels she has to work so hard is because she is acutely aware of how, according to Catholic teachings, her worth comes from her continued devotion and from keeping her sexuality under tight control. Xiomara doesn’t feel that either of these practices are easy to maintain, given that she experiences sexual thoughts and desires that people tell her go against what it means to be a good Catholic. Because of this conflict, Xiomara has very real doubts about God and the role that she’d like religion to play in her life. For much of the novel, Xiomara sees religion as something designed to turn her into someone she doesn’t want to be, all while oppressing the parts of her that she’s interested in exploring. This includes her love of poetry (the school club for which meets on Tuesday afternoons at the same time as confirmation class) and her sexuality.
What’s more, Xiomara is often not given a choice in whether or not to participate in religious activities—and her participation means that she is further expected to accept what others tell her without asking questions. Then, when Xiomara does ask questions about religion or otherwise rebels, Mami forces Xiomara to, for example, kneel on rice and pray. Devotion tends to be a punishment for Xiomara, not something that she is happy to be a part of or that helps her make sense of her questions.
This finally begins to change when, after Xiomara asks a series of questions about Genesis, original sin, and Eve, and then gets caught kissing Aman , Mami forces Xiomara to attend confession with Father Sean. Rather than going along with Mami’s punishments or answering Xiomara’s questions, Father Sean suggests to Mami that Xiomara put off confirmation. While not entirely a win for Xiomara, who would like to leave religion behind completely at this point, this turn of events does suggest that Father Sean is far more open to his congregation questioning their relationships with God than Xiomara gave him credit for. In other words, at least in Father Sean’s eyes, religions devotion shouldn’t be as unthinking or as closely tied to punishment as Mami might want it to be for Xiomara. By giving Xiomara the space to ask questions and especially by not requiring her to be confirmed as Mami wants her to be, Father Sean encourages Xiomara to come to religion on her own terms. Importantly, as Father Sean engages with Xiomara in this way and stands up for her autonomy, he also situates himself as a trustworthy and nonjudgmental person to help her answer some of her questions. Later, he even helps her talk to Mami about how to handle the different ways in which she and Xiomara see religion.
Father Sean teaches Xiomara the importance of thinking critically about religion and, most importantly, models for Xiomara and Mami how a person’s questions about faith don’t mean that their relationships with other faithful people have to suffer as a consequence. In fact, his counseling sessions with Xiomara and Mami help Mami to come to terms with the daughter she has, not the idealized daughter she wants. In short, Father Sean makes the case to everyone that confirmation and other formal religious rites of passage aren’t actually good markers of a mature adult or a devoted person. Rather, maturity comes when a person is able to think critically about God and religious teachings, and then go on to choose to be faithful in a way that feels authentic and meaningful for them.
Religion and Coming of Age ThemeTracker
Religion and Coming of Age Quotes in The Poet X
The other girls call me conceited. Ho. Thot. Fast. When your body takes up more room than your voice you are always the target of well-aimed rumors, which is why I let my knuckles talk for me. Which is why I learned to shrug when my name was replaced by insults.
I look at her scarred knuckles. I know exactly how she was taught faith.
Their gazes and words are heavy with all the things they want you to be.
It is ungrateful to feel like a burden. It is ungrateful to resent my own birth. I know that Twin and I are miracles.
Aren’t we reminded every single day?
And I get all this attention from guys but it’s like a sancocho of emotions.
This stew of mixed-up ingredients: partly flattered they think I’m attractive, partly scared they’re only interested in my ass and boobs, and a good measure of Mami-will-kill-me fear sprinkled on top.
What if I like a boy too much and none of those things happen... they’re the only scales I have.
How does a girl like me figure out the weight of what it means to love a boy?
what’s the point of God giving me life if I can’t live it as my own?
Why does listening to his commandments mean I need to shut down my own voice?
“And about this apple, how come God didn’t explain why they couldn’t eat it? He gave Eve curiosity but didn’t expect her to use it? Unless the apple is a metaphor? Is the whole Bible a poem? What’s not a metaphor? Did any of it actually happen?
And I knew then what I’d known since my period came: my body was trouble. I had to pray the trouble out of the body God gave me. My body was a problem. And I didn’t want any of these boys to be the ones to solve it. I wanted to forget I had this body at all.
But even business deals are promises. And we still married in a church. And so I never walked away from him
although I tried my best to get back to my first love. And confirmation is the last step I can give you.
I lay it across my wrist and cinch the clasps closed. Her daughter on one side, myself on the other.
I have no more poems. My mind blanks. A roar tears from my mouth. “Burn it! Burn it. This is where the poems are,” I say, thumping a fist against my chest.
“Will you burn me? Will you burn me, too? You would burn me, wouldn’t you, if you could?”
She puts a soft hand on my arm and I look into the face of a woman not much older than me, a woman with a Spanish last name, who loves books and poetry, who I notice for the first time is pretty, who has a soft voice and called my house because she was worried and the words are out before I know it:
And so, I love this quote because even though it’s not about poetry, it IS about poetry. It’s about any of the words that bring us together and how we can form a home in them.
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Full Book Analysis. The Poet X is a contemporary, coming-of-age, young-adult novel-in-verse by Elizabeth Acevedo. The protagonist, fifteen-year-old Xiomara Batista struggles to find her voice and to develop her own identity in spite of her mother's expectations for her life. Throughout the novel, Xiomara keeps a journal of her poetry, which ...
The Poet X follows 15-year-old Xiomara, a second-generation Dominican American living in Harlem.In part because of Xiomara's upbringing in the Catholic Church and in part because of her family's Dominican traditions, Xiomara's sexual coming of age is something that she, as a curious and questioning teen, can't ignore—but it's something that disturbs her mother, Mami, and that Mami ...
The Poet X Summary. Next. Part I. 15-year-old Xiomara sits on the stoop of her building in Harlem in the last week before school starts. Even the drug dealers seem more pleasant as they catcall her. Xiomara sneaks back upstairs before Mami gets home from work. Xiomara explains that she's tall, curvy, and gets a lot of attention on the street ...
The Poet X joins the growing genre of verse novels for young adults including by Kwame Alexander and by Sharon Creech. Though verse narratives and epic poems like the Odyssey and the Epic of Gilgamesh have existed for millennia, the verse novel is distinctly modern and traces its roots to the early 1800s. A famous early example is Eugene Onegin ...
The Poet X. Adolescence alone, as a transitional period from child to adult, marks a challenging time in an individual's life. Often times, factors outside the mind and body seem to exist solely to aggravate this tremulous, question-filled period. Poet X 's... The Poet X essays are academic essays for citation.
The Poet X Summary. Xiomara is a fifteen-year-old Dominican-American girl living in Harlem with her twin brother Xavier (she calls him "Twin"), her indifferent Papi, and her religious and strict Mami. She grapples with normal teenage-girl issues, such as her identity, her body, boys, and questions regarding religion.
Thanks for exploring this SuperSummary Study Guide of "The Poet X" by Elizabeth Acevedo. A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
Analysis. Last Updated September 5, 2023. The Poet X, by Elizabeth Acevedo, is a profound, delightful, and moving novel about a girl's coming-of-age experience. The protagonist, Xiomara Batista ...
Discussion of themes and motifs in Elizabeth Acevedo's The Poet X. eNotes critical analyses help you gain a deeper understanding of The Poet X so you can excel on your essay or test.
The Poet X essays are academic essays for citation. These papers were written primarily by students and provide critical analysis of The Poet X by Acevado. The Poet X study guide contains a biography of Acevado, literature essays, quiz questions, major themes, characters, and a full summary and analysis.
Summary. Analysis. Friday, August 24. Stoop-Sitting. Xiomara writes that it's the last week before school starts, so she enjoys the last bits of summer from her stoop. She watches the old church ladies gossip and an old man open the fire hydrant so kids can play in the water. Cabs drive by blasting bachata music and she can hear basketballs ...
The Poet X Study Guide. Published in 2018, The Poet X is a young adult realistic fiction novel by Dominican-American poet and author Elizabeth Acevedo. The novel—specifically the protagonist Xiomara, who goes by "X"—draws on Acevedo's own experience growing up in New York City as the child of Dominican immigrants.
Essays for The Poet X. The Poet X essays are academic essays for citation. These papers were written primarily by students and provide critical analysis of The Poet X by Acevado. Discovering Self Worth through Spoken Word in "The Poet X" Elizabeth Acevedo's Ode to Adolescent Power: Culture, Conflict, and Reassurance in The Poet X
Family, Abuse, and Expectations Theme Analysis. LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in The Poet X, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work. Xiomara 's home life is wildly dysfunctional and, at times, extremely abusive—if Xiomara in particular doesn't follow Mami 's rules to the letter, Mami hits her.
In the novel Poet X by Elizabeth Acevedo, the author uses X's relationship with Caridad to show that a secure friendship makes X feel like she always has someone to turn to even when the times are rough. Caridad was one of the only people who truly understood and accepted X's true self. Whenever X had an issue, Caridad was there to listen and give advice.
Discovering Self Worth through Spoken Word in "The Poet X" Olivia F. Vega 11th Grade. In Elizabeth Acevedo's young adult novel, The Poet X, fifteen-year old Dominican-American Xiomara Batista describes her aspirations and personal life experiences in the form of poetic verse. Through her narration the reader learns that Xiomara's ...
The Poet X follows 15-year-old Xiomara, a second-generation Dominican American living in Harlem.In part because of Xiomara's upbringing in the Catholic Church and in part because of her family's Dominican traditions, Xiomara's sexual coming of age is something that she, as a curious and questioning teen, can't ignore—but it's something that disturbs her mother, Mami, and that Mami ...
Importantly, The Poet X doesn't try to make the case that religion is unequivocally bad or oppressive, even though it often seems that way to Xiomara. Instead, the novel proposes that part of a young person's coming-of-age journey should necessarily include asking questions about the belief systems that they were raised with, and ultimately ...