The Poet X Literary Elements

Young adult poetry/fiction

21st-century New York City (Harlem)

The book is told from the first-person point of view of Xiomara.

Tone: confident, euphoric, funny, sympathetic, introspective, anxious, confused, fatalistic, furious

Mood: restless, discontented, revelatory, liberatory, thoughtful, vibrant

The protagonist is Xiomara, a Dominican teenage girl from Harlem who is an aspiring slam poet and who struggles with religion, her relationship with her mother, and the kind of person she wants to be. The antagonist is herself and her own self-consciousness, but also her mother, a devoutly Catholic woman with strict ideas about what her children should be.

The major conflict is that Xiomara isn't sure who she wants to be - she struggles between feeling socially isolated and wanting to pursue poetry, but also knowing that her mother would oppose that. She struggles with her religious views and whether she wants to be confirmed in the church. All of this comes up against not only her mother's view of what she should be, but also with her own internalized idea of what she should be; thus, the book follows her figuring out who she will be.

The climax of the book is when Xiomara's mother finds her journal and lights it on fire.

1. When Xiomara cannot find her notebook, Acevedo is foreshadowing the discovery that Mami has found it.
2. Xiomara catches Twin looking at one of the male basketball players, foreshadowing our discovery that he is gay

1. "Just because your father's present, doesn't mean he isn't absent.” Xiomara says this to explain how absent her father truly is. This line is an understatement because her father is more than just not necessarily "not absent": he takes no role in raising his children, stays silent in conflicts, and hides away when things get too difficult.

1. The strong mental connection between Xiomara and Xavier is an allusion to the plethora of twin lore throughout mythology, where twins are seen as magical because of the connection between them.
2. There are numerous allusions to the Bible and Catholicism: priests, mass, communion, confirmation, seven deadly sins, Psalms and Proverbs, Eve, Jesus, etc.
3. There are numerous allusions to contemporary rappers: Nicki Minaj, J. Cole, Kendrick Lamar, Eve

Acevedo uses light imagery - lanterns, the sun, light, etc. - to show how poetry and friends make Xiomara's life better and bring happiness to it. Her life is dark until she finds things that bring light and happiness into it.

1. Xiomara's mother is a paradox. She is a devout Catholic, and her strong religious beliefs should mean that she is a kind and peaceful person (Christianity is a religion of tolerance) but instead she is judgmental and strict, acting in a way that is paradoxical to her religious beliefs.
2. "Just because your father's present / doesn't mean he isn't absent" (65)
3. "...too many things to say and nothing to say at all" (147)

1. Xiomara and Aman meet in biology class as lab partners, where they learn about Darwin in class together. When they get together later in the book, Xiomara compares her heart to one of Darwin's finches taking off, paralleling how the two of them met.

1. Xiomara frequently talks about how she disagrees with what the church does and what they believe. Obviously the physical church building doesn't believe anything, so this is her using the word "church" as a metonymy for the individual people who work in it.

1. "Harlem is opening its eyes to September" (3)
2. " . . . I let my knuckles speak for me" (5)
3. " . . . she took all of the stereotypes / and put them in a chokehold / until they breathed out the truth" (126)
4. "And any words I have / suicide-jump off my tongue" (132)