The Poet X Book Review Response

The following review response was an assignment turned in for class in the Fall 2021 semester at the University of Iowa for a Latinx Childhoods class taught by Dr. Elizabeth Rodriguez Fielder. The assignment asked students to write a response paper (with any topic of interest) on the novel The Poet X by Elizabeth Acevedo. This book, and the following response paper, had a profound impact on my understanding of childhood. It formed new insights that I used to analyze other books I read this year. Because of that, it would be only right to include this paper for The Poet X and The Poet X as part of my blog and review page. This paper, and thus the following review response, is an original piece of work.

Elizabeth Acevedo is the author of The Poet X, which won the National Book Award for Young People's Literature, the Michael L. Printz Award, the Pura Belpré Award, the Boston Globe-Horn Book Award, and the Walter Award. She is a National Poetry Slam champion and holds an MFA in creative writing from the University of Maryland. Acevedo lives with her partner in Washington, DC. 

Xiomara Batista feels unheard and unable to hide in her Harlem neighborhood—but secretly, she pours her dreams and frustrations onto the pages of her notebook like prayers. When she is invited to join her school's slam poetry club, Xiomara doesn't know how she could ever attend without her religious mami finding out. But even so, in the face of a world that may not want to hear her, Xiomara refuses to be silent. 

Xiomara Batista, in Elizabeth Acevedo's The Poet X, discovers the power of her identity via her ability to claim something as simple as a name. 

It is clear from the beginning that Xiomara has a huge personality, and holds so much in her heart. She often claims to live on the edge of being so physically big that she's "unhide-able" while also emotionally being made to "feel too small for all that's inside [her]" (5, 34). This is part of the reason she writes so much poetry, this distilled form of verse contrasting sharply with her grand desires. Xiomara is trying to figure out who she is—something she isn't able to do until she shares her poems and doubts with Aman. In the face of Xiomara's Catholic upbringing, she is taught that to be in a woman's body is to essentially be born powerless. 

The Catholic Church, Xiomara realizes as she continuously finds herself butting heads with the ideals of it, does not believe in women being powerful. When she questions the stories the Bible tells her about Adam and Eve and creation, asking specifically, "He gave Eve curiosity/but didn't expect her to use it?" (120). Father Sean says that Eve "could have made a better choice" instead of giving Xiomara "an answer to anything [she] asked" (119, 124). Like how she questions the treatment of Eve, Xiomara demands to know what the point of God giving her life is for, if she can't live it as her own—especially if it means she needs "to shut down [her] voice" (57). Xiomara has already claimed to feel small, to be made to feel small inside a big body, and she recognizes that part of this is due to her faith. She is told to have faith in the men of the holy trinity, yet it is "men [who] are the first ones/to make [her] feel small" (59). By not answering her questions, and by thus making her feel that her doubts and concerns are invalid, Xiomara is continuously taught that to be a woman, and a woman with power, is to be immediately shut down and shut out. Instead of finding a place of comfort and acceptance in faith, she finds a space that does not allow her to become who she wants to be. 

It isn't until Xiomara rebels from this type of teaching that she's able to discover her own power. She does so by hanging out with Aman, who is the first person to call Xiomara "X." When Xiomara first hears the name, she ponders over "how it's such a small letter/but still fits all of [her]" (132). This is the very first step, the biggest one, for Xiomara in uncovering her potential as a poet, and as someone who holds power within her words and her identity. Instead of feeling boxed down into something small, like how the Catholic Church makes her feel, Xiomara now feels the weight of endless possibilities inside the letter that she claims as her new identity. 

Once Xiomara finds her power in her name she is able to stand up and claim her identity as a poet. She yells at her mother, one of the biggest figures of faith within the novel, "'The X I am/is an armed dress I clothe myself in every morning,'" and it is in this moment where Xiomara is able to reclaim who she wants to be. Deliberately standing up to her mother and claiming herself as a "'church'" and an "'omen'" is where we finally see the ideas of Xiomara's own power outweighing the power of the Catholic Church (307). By throwing her mother's language of the church back at her, while also maintaining her desire to be a poet under the extended metaphor of her chosen name, Xiomara makes a statement to her mother about the person she has become without compromising any part of who she used to be.  

Xiomara's development as a character is intrinsically tied to her name—X. Once she finds her name, she finds an identity that encapsulates all of who she is—the poet, the girl in doubt, the girl who wants more, the protector—and can claim that as who she is and wants to be. 

*This response can also be found on my Goodreads page*