Immigrants In our Own Land by Jimmy Santiago Baca

What I really enjoyed today during class was the fact that we got to learn about a new author and one of his poems. I really found his life amazing. It was awesome where he came from and all the hard work and effort he put to be a better person. When I read his poem of," Immigrants In Our Own Land," I really got a good sense of actual reality. His experience of life was so on point that it really gave us the view of reality that I found really relate-able. I think that the most interesting thing that I found in this poem was the fact that you can see how much the author has grown and all the hard work he has put into improving who he is and reaching any goals, I found it amazing how you would never think that he was ever illiterate when reading his poems because that is how good and amazing his writing is. When I read the poem and thought about the theme, tone, mood, and devices I had the same thoughts as Jessica's blog post. I think that the theme in this poem would be expectations vs reality like Jessica said in her blog post. Some people come to this country to find better opportunities and live a better life but once they get here they realize that nothing is going to change and reality hits them, but sometimes I would say that there are those people who get lucky. In this poem I would say that the tone of the author would be a tone that changes throughout the poem. For example in the beginning the author starts with a calm tone but as the poem goes on the author becomes sad and depressed because he is realizing the reality of life and that we have to go through many hardships to realize that nothing much will change. As well as the author's mood at first it's hopeful and slowly we can hear how he is loosing hope little by little with the words he uses and how he describes what he feels. Some devices that we find in this poem would be Irony. We see the use of Irony because the poem mainly focuses on how people come to a new country for a better life but all they get is a prison. Another device that we can see in this poem would be the use of his Diction and Syntax. We can see all through out the poem that he helps us imagine and get an idea of how Immigrants live their life like prisons by comparing prisons to their lives. I really found this poem like a punch in the face of how life really is and that it can really suck sometimes. .-.