“Legal Alien” Assignment
Writing Help
10 CP English
How to begin the paper
 Since the prompt asks you to discuss voice and connect Mora’s
use of voice to the theme, you need to make sure that you
include this information in the topic sentence/thesis.
 Also, in your thesis statement you want to introduce the author
and the title of the poem
 Since we need to discuss the theme in our thesis, it would
probably be wise to identify it now. To come up with a good
theme, consider the conflict of the text (in this case it would be
the cultural identity conflict the narrator faces) and attach that
to a lesson. So theme of the poem could be… Sometimes people
who are technically a part of two cultures end up feeling
alienated by both.
 So your thesis statement should look something like this….
 In her poem “Legal Alien,” Pat Mora uses voice to convey the
theme that___________(Insert thematic connection)
 Final Thesis: In her poem “Legal Alien,” Pat Mora uses voice to
convey the theme that sometimes people who are technically a
part of two cultures end up feeling alienated by both.
Choosing Examples
 Next, we want to choose examples that support our
thesis and that clearly exemplify the author’s USE OF
VOICE.
 The assignment sheet tells us that we should focus on
“Diction, Syntax, Tone, Imagery, Perspective, Style”
 Looking at word choice/diction particularly we can
immediately identify that the author uses Spanish and
English. We could use this as an example of voice
(diction) being used to show how the narrator feels like
an outcast in both cultures.
 Looking at imagery, we could look at the lines where the
narrator speaks about “sliding” between both cultures
and connect that to the narrator’s feelings of alienation.
Example paragraph start
In her poem “Legal Alien,” Pat Mora uses voice to convey
the theme that sometimes people who are technically a part of
two cultures end up feeling alienated from both. For instance,
Mora uses both Spanish and English language in her poem.
This interesting diction choice is used to show how she is
divided between two cultures, and is ultimately not accepted
by either. This is seen when she writes “……