The Poet X Essay Questions

What does Elizabeth Acevedo mean when she says, “The world is almost peaceful when you stop trying to understand it”?

There is nothing as painful as asking unanswerable questions. Besides satisfying inquisitiveness, answerable questions increase human knowledge and creativity. However, Acevedo implies that asking impenetrable questions that are beyond human reckoning will end up overburdoning our souls. Some questions make human beings see the world as complex and unfair because of what they go through in their lives. Therefore, trying to understand everything about the world can be devastating to our lives. We will have questions without answers making us annoyed and unsatisfied. However, if people stop asking hard questions about earth, life becomes more enjoyable and stress-free.

How does Xiomara's relationship with her mother evolve over the course of the novel?

A teenage girl's relationship with her mother is naturally complicated, but Xiomara and Mami's seems particularly fraught. Mami is incredibly strict, judgmental, unyielding, and even cruel to her daughter. At the beginning of the novel they are in a sort of stasis, with Xiomara knowing exactly how she has to act to preclude punishment. However, this is untenable. Xiomara is growing up and wants to learn who she is, what she wants, and how to express herself. Her mother's beliefs and rules seem increasingly absurd and punitive and Xiomara pushes back at them more and more. There is an ebb with the subway kissing incident and a bit of a flow with the holidays, but their relationship troubles come to a head in January when Mami finds her notebook. This, and Xiomara's subsequent running away, force a confrontation where the two finally begin to deal with their issues. Though they are not particularly close by the end of the novel, they are working on things and the overall note is an optimistic one.

Why does Xiomara move from wanting to keep her poems private to reciting them in front of others?

Initially Xiomara is mostly horrified at the thought of reading her work out loud. It is too much a part of herself to expose to the world; she feels too vulnerable, too unsure of how others will feel about her unfettered thoughts and feelings. Yet as time passes, her supportive teacher, poetry club peers, brother, and best friend encourage her to share her work with the world. She watches a video of a female poet and sees Chris, one of the other students from the club, perform, which makes her start to think about doing it herself. She comes to think that her words might be helpful to others who are feeling the same things. She sees that art is a naturally terrifying and wondrous thing and that it is worth the risk.

How does Xiomara feel about her body, and why?

Xiomara is tall and voluptuous, and has been since she was young. Men of all ages constantly comment upon her body and sometimes take the liberty to touch her without her permission. Most of the time this makes her feel exposed, vulnerable, angry, and ashamed. This is exacerbated by her mother's extreme religiosity which blames women for making men "sin." However, occasionally, and against her will, she feels a twinge of excitement because she is coming to terms with her sexuality and her desire to be desired. This is a very nuanced portrait of how a woman can feel when she is the object of unsolicited attention.

Why does Xiomara retreat into silence in the middle of the novel?

Xiomara is used to words—to being opinionated and bold, to getting in people's faces when they harass her or her brother, to speaking up around her friends and her boyfriend and even questioning the Catholic teachings that she's been raised with. However, after she is caught kissing Aman and is cruelly punished by her mother, she retreats into silence. She feels diminished, invisible. She does not want to her use her physical voice anymore because she feels like no one cares what she has to say. The only voice she is comfortable with is the private one she uses in her writing, and it will take a lot of growth to move beyond her silent phase.