Borders

Arte Público Press
Paperback ISBN 0-934770-57-3

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Can be purchased or ordered anywhere books are sold. Find your local independent bookstore at IndieBound or purchase online at Amazon.

Awards

Southwest Book Award, Border Regional Library Association, 1987

About the Book

Winner of a Southwest Book Award. In these poems, Mora explores the political, cultural, social and emotional borders that divide people, forming their individual identities.

Check out Color of Silence: Sensory Imagery in Pat Mora’s Poem “Echoes”, a lesson plan from ReadWriteThink.com using "Echoes," a poem from Borders.

Highlighted Reviews

"Mora confronts the clash of cultures in a courageous, tough tone that masks a gentle sensibility. What finally gives this book its healing power is the mesmerizing honesty of Mora's celebration of herself as a woman, mother, lover."—The Bloomsbury Review

"We begin one of Mora’s poems as if embarking on an exploration of an unknown country. When we finish, we have learned so much about its topology we feel we can claim the land as ours. These are arduous expeditions, though, for both writer and reader."—El Paso Times

Desert Women

Desert women know
about survival.
Fierce heat and cold
have burned and thickened
our skin. Like cactus
we've learned to hoard,
to sprout deep roots,
to seem asleep, yet wake
at the scent of softness
in the air, to hide
pain and loss by silence,
no branches wail
or whisper our sad songs
safe behind our thorns.

Don't be deceived.
When we bloom, we stun.