The Poet X

Fiction | Novel/Book in Verse | YA | Published in 2018

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Background

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Part 2

Part 3

Character Analysis

Themes

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Background

Authorial Context: Elizabeth Acevedo

Elizabeth Acevedo, the author of The Poet X and a slam poet herself, is a born-and-raised New Yorker, who—like Xiomara—is of Dominican heritage and identifies as Afro-Latina.

Before she became a New York Times-bestselling author, Acevedo was an eighth-grade English literature schoolteacher. As she explained in an interview with the blog Chalkboard Champions: Recognizing and Celebrating Great Teachers, her experiences as a schoolteacher made her intimately aware of the inner-workings of the teenage mind and put her directly in touch with the teenage experience:

“Being around teenagers all the time makes me aware of the emotional scale that they’re on and how they’re responding to things […] If nothing else, it’s a reminder of how brilliant they are […] Some adults write down to young people, but, if you listen to them, they’ll tell you what they need. Oftentimes, I think they’re more able to handle difficult subjects than we give them credit for.”

What’s more, Acevedo’s lived experience as an Afro-Latina woman who grew up in New York City also shaped the characters, settings, and themes in The Poet X. Acevedo’s characters, particularly Xiomara and Xavier, draw on Acevedo’s lived experience. Acevedo also once said that her love of the written word comes from early childhood experiences with language, thus exposing her to the emotional power of poetry, and especially slam poetry.

Cultural Context: Catholicism and the Afro-Latino/a Community in New York City

The term “Afro-Latino/a” generally refers to people of both African and Latin American descent who typically reside in Latin America, the Caribbean, and/or the United States. Afro-Latino/a culture, especially in New York City, affects the course of Xiomara’s experiences in The Poet X.

Catholicism is the most prominent religion in the Latin American community, and for Mami, her devout Catholic beliefs deeply affects the way she raises both Xiomara and Xavier. Indeed, Mami imposes numerous conditions upon Xiomara and Xavier, about how to behave and how to think about their own identities. Throughout the book, Mami tries to indoctrinate Xiomara with cautionary tales gleaned from Biblical stories; for Mami, there is no room for doubt between what is taught at church and how one should live their life. This imbues Xiomara with a tremendous sense of guilt around her thoughts, her body, and her desires. Rather than cow to Mami’s expectations, however, Xiomara responds with outrage, highlighting the conflicts between generations of the community. Compared to Xiomara, Xavier is more mellow: Xavier is seen as a “good” kid (for example, he never gets into fights and attends a school for gifted students). Like Xiomara, though, Xavier identifying as a queer young man challenges norms and conventions within the Catholic church, and thus creates a sense of guilt in him as well.

Literary Context: Slam Poetry

The Poet X is a novel-in-verse written in the style of slam poetry, a literary tradition beloved by both Xiomara and the author herself.

Slam poetry is a subgenre of poetry that has its roots in urban culture and began in Chicago in the mid-1980’s; American poet Marc Smith is often thought as the godfather of slam poetry. Smith is one of the first people who began experimenting with alternative forms and styles of poetry that culminate in a competitive “slam” performance. With slam poetry, Smith rallied against the conventions of traditional poetry, feeling that the art form was “too structured and stuffy.” As an urban artform, slam poetry often features informal slang and colloquialisms right alongside more formal poetic language.

Xiomara’s love of slam poetry combines her love of literature with her love of the Afro-Latino culture of her neighborhood. Harlem is often associated with poets of the Harlem Renaissance, such as Langston Hughes and Alice Dunbar Nelson; New York City more broadly is home to a number of slam poetry institutions, such as the Nuyorican Poets Café, which is a cultural icon on the Lower East Side that has been operating since 1973. The artistic culture of these spaces valued reclaiming canonical poetic forms and imbuing them with hybridity and a sense of play, bringing the form to a wider audience that has long had less opportunity and access to literary culture.