The very earth will disown you If your soul barter my soul; In angry tribulation The waters will tremble and rise.
My world became more beautiful Since the day you took me to you, When, under the flowering thorn tree Together we stood without words, And love, like the heavy fragrance Of the flowering thorn tree, pierced us.
The earth will vomit forth snakes If ever you barter my soul! Barren of your child, and empty I rock my desolate knees, Christ in my breast will be crushed, And the charitable door of my house Will break the wrist of the beggar, And repulse the woman in sorrow.
The kiss your mouth gives another Will echo within my ear, As the deep surrounding caverns Bring back your words to me. Even the dust of the highway Keeps the scent of your footprints. I track them, and like a deer Follow you into the mountains.
The poem “God Wills It” by Gabriela Mistral explores themes of love and betrayal. She warns of the catastrophic consequences of disloyalty. Through this, she reveals the message that love is more than a bond, it is about unity and devotion that should not be betrayed without large consequences.
The speaker has a strong-minded and adamant tone. Mistral does not filter or sugarcoat the harsh repercussions of betrayal. This is seen through statements like “The very earth will disown you” and “The earth will vomit forth snakes”. The utilization of earthly consequences shows the magnitude of disloyalty through Mistral’s eyes. Instead of just describing the ways in which she would be upset or punish them, she explains how the earth would also punish them for their fathlessness. To Mistral, betrayal is so serious that even the earth would punish their behavior.
Despite this strident tone, I also believe there is an underlying loving tone that is much softer. The severity of her words reveal the significance of this relationship to her. She clearly loves and values the bond she has and does not want it to be broken. Therefore, in some ways, this poem reveals her vulnerability and fear of being hurt — which contrasts with the intense words she directly states.
The title “God Wills It” also reveals the significance of betrayal to the poet. They believe disloyalty is so severe that it requires divine intervention — even God would punish this behavior. The severity of betrayal is also seen through the line “The earth will vomit forth snakes/If you ever barter my soul”. The metaphor within this line invokes danger, fear, and a divine wrath, showing how betrayal is not only negative for the speaker, but also to the natural world.
The poem consists of alot of figurative language. The comparison of love to the “heavy fragrance of the flowering thorn tree” reveals the beautiful but painful aspects intertwined in love. Also, personification is seen through the human-like qualities aspects of nature are given. For example, dust is personified through the statement, “Even the dust of the highway/keeps the scent of your footprints”. Water is personified through “The waters will tremble and rise” and earth is personified through the line “The very earth will disown you”. This technique symbolizes the speaker’s belief in the natural world’s alignment with their moral compass.
A shift occurs between the memories of the thorn tree and the violent imagery of betrayal’s consequences. Once again, this contrast shows the severity of betrayal to the reader.
The poem uses a mixture of enjambment and end-stopped lines, creating a fluid and flowy, but fragmented and punctuated tone. For example, the enjambment lines, such as “Even the dust of the highway/keeps the scent of your footprints” conveys a sense of longing that spills over, while end-stopped lines like, “The earth will vomit forth snakes” provide a definitive and ominous tone. The effect of the end-stopped lines is also revealed through the overall structure of the poem. The short stanzas resembles the fragmented emotional state of the speaker, intensifiying the severity of betrayal.
Throughout the poem, the speaker reveals that she has an underlying fear of losing the deep connection with a person she loves. I, along with many others can resonate with this fear, as being betrayed by someone you care about can be one of the worst feelings to experience. As humans, we desire meaningful relationships in which we can trust a person enough to be loyal and refrain from causing us any hurt. We strive for genuine bonds that is sometimes more than just love — it’s also about spiritual unity.
“Mud Mothers” by Lenelle Moise expresses the struggle and hardships endured by Haiti and the Haitian community. The author’s overall message and intentions in writing this poem were to express the importance of recognizing and caring about the vulnerability of Haiti. The title was the first aspect of the poem that stood out to me. Before reading the poem, I could not think of the meaning behind the phrase “mud mothers”. However, as I read, I gained a greater sense of understanding and recognized the significance of the title in the poem. At one point in the poem, Moise states, “can we be free? really? if our mothers are mud? if dead?”. This metaphor reveals the vulnerable and severe state of Haiti by expressing how women are dying — mothers are dying. I believe the author’s word choice of “mother” is extremely powerful. Out of all familial labels to choose from, the author chooses “mother”. Mothers are often the foundation for many children, so when they are deprived, children are deprived. This represents the literal effect of Haiti’s condition. However, “mother” can also be interpreted less literally. Our earth is often referred to as a mother and a home country is often referred to as the motherland. So, the author could have also been referring to the deprivation of Haiti itself. The statement provokes the question, How can we be free when our country is dying?
Additionally, the author uses contrast throughout the poem. When describing the people, positive diction is often utilized. But when describing the situation, negative diction is utilized. For example, Moise states, “we are a proud resilient people though we return to dust daily” and then later states, “we are hungry creative people”. The quick contrast between negative and positive diction emphasizes the optimism and resilience of the Haitian people despite the hardships and difficulties they face day to day. Contrast is also used to describe the land itself. Moise states, “what was green is now, dust and everyone knows, trees unleash oxygen (another humble word for life)”. This statement describes the past Haiti as green — representing life and prosperity while describing the current version of Haiti as dust — representing destruction and death. The author placed two words with such drastic connotations so close together. This emphasizes the drastic and rapid change in what Haiti is now and what it once was.
The point of view also makes the poem so powerful. Through the words “we”, it is obvious that Lenelle Moise is speaking from her own experience. She resonates with the words she is saying, therefore her emotions are revealed through her sorrowful and desperate tone. One technique that reveals this tone is her use of rhetorical questions. “is haiti really free if our babies die starving?”. Asking questions in this way shows how desperate and frustrated she is to be asking such simple questions. However, although Moise is speaking from her own experience as a Haitian, she never uses “I” or “me”, and it is important to recognize the impact that has on the poem and the readers. The terms “we” and “our” shifts the focus from an individual to a group of people. People might often ignore the struggles of Haiti because it is only affecting a small portion of the world. However, Moise’s point of view emphasizes how the severe state of Haiti is affecting a large range of people. The pronouns also provide the readers with a sense of unity and collectiveness, as they bring the readers into the experience. This unity encourages the reader to be a part of the solution, as we are all in this together.
Poem: When I am a toddler, a child, a tween, a teen, and a young adult, I am called an ancestral soul, a ti gran moun, a little old person.
Adults study me and decide that I am wise beyond my years, mature for my age, emotionally ripe. I am told it is unusual to meet a five-ten-fifteen-year-old girl who does not slouch or mumble or speak in monosyllables.
When I do the things that come naturally to me—when I hold my spine up erect, when I wait my turn to speak, when I speak having listened, carefully, when I enunciate, when I look grown-ups in the eye—I am told I must have “been here before.”
“How do you know?” one college professor asks me after she has seen a psychologically violent play I have written at age nineteen. “How do you already know?”
In high school, I charm my teachers. They encourage me to write speeches about feminism that I recite for International Women’s Day at City Hall or deliver as part of conference panels at local universities. “If you were older,” they tell me, “we would probably be friends.” One of them even flirts with me.
Among my peers I exist somewhere between amicably mysterious and irrevocably dorky. The popular kids greet me in the hallways, but they never invite me to their beer-drenched parties. I will never play Spin the Bottle. I will never play Seven Minutes in Heaven. My mother tells me she is protecting me from boys, but the truth is, after I do my homework, she wants me to type up another family friend’s résumé or resignation letter. At home, I am a bridge, a cultural interpreter, a spokesperson, a trusted ally, an American who is Haitian too, but also definitely American.
The children of immigrants don’t get to be children. We lose our innocence watching our parents’ backs bend, break. I am an old soul because when I am young, I watch my parents’ spirits get slaughtered.
In Haiti, they were middle class. Hopeful teachers. Home owners. They were black like their live-in servants. They donated clothes to the poor. They gave up everything they knew to inherit American dreams. And here, they join factory lines, wipe shit from mean old white men’s behinds, scrub five-star hotel toilets for dimes above minimum wage. Here, they shuck and jive and step and fetch and play chauffeur to people who aren’t as smart as they are, people who do not speak as many languages as they do. In the 1980s, they are barred from giving blood because newscasters and politicians say that AIDS comes from where they come from: Haiti, the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere, a black magic island that spawns boat people and chaos, a place of illiterate zombies, orphan beggars and brazen political corruption.
When I am a child, my childhood is a luxury my family cannot afford. Their dignity is not spared, so my innocence is not spared. They are humiliated and traumatized daily, so I become a nurse to their trauma. I am told too much, so I know too much, so I am wise beyond my years.
When I am six, my mother tells me that when she found out she was pregnant with me at age nineteen, she “tried to kill the baby.” She says “the baby,” as if it isn’t me she’s talking about; as if I am not the expensive, scandalous daughter who forced my way into her world despite the abortion-inducing herbal teas she drank and her frantic leaps off of small buildings.
When I am sixteen, my father calls me on the phone to, inevitably, weep. He says, “Living in this country, I have learned not to hope for things. Only you are my hope. Only you.”
Analysis: In “The Children of Immigrants,” Lenelle Moise describes her experience as the child of Haitian immigrants. Her role in the family places high expectations on her, causing her to mature faster. Sometimes these high expectations are literal, as she is expected to complete tasks such as “type up another family friend’s résumé or resignation letter” because she is “a bridge, a cultural interpreter, a spokesperson, a trusted ally, an American who is Haitian too, but also definitely American”. Her familiarity and experience with American culture provide her with a certain knowledge that her Haitian peers may not know. Therefore, she is expected to assist them with certain tasks. However, the harsh expectations placed on her are not always so literal and easy to pinpoint. Towards the end of the poem, Moise explains that her dad once stated, “Living in this country, I have learned not to hope for things. Only you are my hope. Only you.” The poet’s parents did not receive a life they necessarily desired, so in a way, they search for the life in their child Moise. This places a large amount of pressure on Moise because she understands that failure in anything will bring her family great disappointment. Between the expectation to help others and consistently satisfy her parents, Moise does not have room to “act her age”. She doesn’t have the choice to be immature — in any case, it might jeopardize her future or her parents’ belief in that future.
Moise’s poem aims to convey the message that children of immigrants do not get to be children in a way that their surrounding peers do not. She explains how others view her, and she explains that many people view her as mature for her age, and they do not quite understand why she is so mature. This is because they do not understand the obligations of being a child of an immigrant. Moise also gives specific examples of how she does not relate to those around her. She says things like “I will never play spin the bottle” or “play seven minutes in heaven”. This particular example gives the reader a greater understanding by providing an example they can relate to. This is an important technique because as expressed in the poem, people do not understand the weight of being a child of an immigrant. Therefore, providing the examples that relate to most people helps the readers to truly understand the obligations and weight of being a child of an immigrant. Her introduction to the message through the perception of others also allows the reader to relate more. Although most readers are not children of immigrants and therefore cannot relate directly, they can relate to being misunderstood, also giving them a greater understanding of the poem.
The structure of the poem is well-fitting for the poem. It is a prose poem written like a story with a first-person point of view. Moise is telling her own story, so the first-person point of view works well.
Moise also uses some interesting techniques to convey her message. At the beginning of the poem, she describes how throughout all stages and ages of her life, she has been more mature for her age. However, instead of saying that, she choose to list out each age by saying “When I am a toddler, a child, a tween, a teen, and a young adult, I am called an ancestral soul, a ti gran moun, a little old person.” This list emphasizes that even when she was extremely young, she was still significantly more mature for her age because she had to be.
Poet, playwright, and performance artist Lenelle Moïse was born in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, and grew up in the suburbs of Boston. She earned an MFA in playwriting from Smith College. When she was 20 years old, Moïse wrote the screenplay for Bolivian director Rodrigo Bellot’s film Sexual Dependency, which has been screened at numerous international film festivals. Her first collection of poetry, Haiti Glass (2015), won the PEN Oakland Josephine Miles Literary Award. Her poetry and prose have appeared widely in anthologies such as Word Warriors: 35 Women Leaders in the Spoken Word Revolution (2007) and We Don’t Need Another Wave: Dispatches from the Next Generation of Feminists (2006).
In her work, influenced by both jazz and hip-hop, Moïse explores the intersections of race, gender, sexual identity, and memory. Her most recent one-woman shows include Word Life, an autobiographical coming-of-age story, and Speaking Intersections, an investigation of queer poetics and prose. She is the author of the plays K-I-S-S-I-N-G, which was commissioned by Clark University, and Merit, which won the Ruby Prize. In 2008, the Culture Project performed her two-woman show Expatriate.
Moïse has received numerous honors, awards, and fellowships for her work. In 2015, she was the Laurel Park artist-in-residence. She has been the Next Voices Fellow at New Repertory Theatre and the Huntington Theatre Company Playwriting Fellow. From 2010–2012, Moïse was poet laureate of Northampton, Massachusetts, where she currently lives.
