Living in the Borderland
The overarching theme of the poem is being stuck between two vastly different approaches to life. The speaker is comfortable and welcome in both rooms, but feels as she totally belongs to neither one. The world of borderlands is one of positive and negative connotations: those who capable of moving across a borderline enjoy a freedom that those who might face greater difficulty can never know. On the other hand, living in the borderland deprives one of a sense of community and a totality of belonging that some may argue is a sweeter gift then freedom.
The Experience of Mixed-Race America
On a more direct level, the poem also provides a glimpse into the experience of what it is like to be of mixed-race in America. The speaker has assimilated into the non-native culture that facilitates career goals and ambitions. At the same time, there is also the suggestion that this assimilation into the fabric of mainstream American existence comes at the cost of cultural and ethnic traditions that do not serve the financial interests of rising in status. An underlying thread in the poem is thus that even though the “American culture” is actually made up various different aspects of existing cultures, the dominant aspect is not social but economic.
The Repressed American Psyche
The cost of placing economic status at the center of a cultural identity inevitably means other interests must be repressed. The various modes of cultural identity that have been repressed over the centuries in order to create the strain of the American character has led—at least in the eyes of the speaker—to a clearly manifested symptomatic psychological state of repression. The “clicking” sound that is placed in contrast to the warm laughter from the other room become a metaphor for what Hispanic-Americans have repressed of their own national character in order to grease the process of assimilation.
