Pat Mora’s poem “Sonrisas” is—literally, perhaps—a textbook example of the essential relationship of context to interpretation. The meaning of this poem is entirely dependent upon contextual clues and the final interpretative conclusion of readers can potentially vary quite widely depending on a number on how much background knowledge one brings to a reading. For instance, the cultural context of “Sonrisas” rises significantly in interpretative importance for the reader who learns that the poem is part of a collection titled Borders. Just knowing that one fact can do much to situate the doorway as a metaphor for a border separating two entities be they entire countries or merely two contrasting areas of socioeconomic strata in a small town. With the additional knowledge that Borders is a work of poetry by a woman of Mexican descent born in El Paso, Texas, the reader is equipped with even greater contextual advantage over the reader who is not. This background information provides enough context to intuit that the speaker in the poem views the doorway as a border between two different cultures that she is at home within and feels comfortable enough to describe in poetic language.
That information still isn’t enough to interpret what the women in the second room actually do for a living, however. By providing information about how the women in the first room speak of things like tenure and curriculum, the most valid conclusion is that they are teachers. If not teachers, then certainly they occupy some professional stature within the educational system. No such clues are provided for the women in the second room, yet the most pervasive interpretation is that they, too, are teachers. This conclusion is arrived at through the contextual clue of the poem’s parallel structure in which comparisons create an analogous connection. The reader knows that these women drink coffee even if it is prepared different in each room, knows how they vary in dress, knows that one room is quiet and the other loud and know how they either smile with their lips or their eyes, then it only makes sense that they share the same job.
But does that need to be so? Could the parallel not be relegated to the work itself, but the location? Consider the implications of the major differences here: no description of working as a teacher, wearing “dresses” rather than “suits” and—perhaps most significant—cooking tamales. Just as no information is directly provided to indicate these women are teachers, so there is no evidence to contradict an interpretation that these women work in the exact same school as those in the first room, but their job is in the skilled labor field. Perhaps they are the school’s cleaning women, cafeteria workers, clerical workers, office assistants or even teacher’s aid of those women in the other room. Such an interpretation us just as logically valid even when remembering that the woman lives in the doorway between the two. What if she used to be an unskilled laborer enjoying sweet coffee, hot tamales and gossip in the past, but now that she’s gotten her degree, she has become one of the teachers. This is an interpretation that explains why the description of the second room seems slightly preferential, yet she is still living in that doorway. She prefers the warmth and camaraderie of the second room, but is eager to enjoy the benefits of economic independence and a fulfilling career despite the emotional sterility represented by the first room.
Two rooms filled with teachers or only one? The genius of Mora’s precise usage of language is that it does not provide an answer. At least it doesn’t provide an answer unless you are armed with more contextual background knowledge than has been provided in this analysis, if such background knowledge even exists, that is.
