across land. Mora might have chosen to write
the poem in a spiral instead of presenting it in the
traditional form of lines and stanzas, but doing
so might draw too much attention to the form
at the expense of the message. A writer who
designs a pattern out of her words runs the risk
of causing readers to think more about how the
words look on the page rather than what the
words mean.
Historical Context
Tornado Alley
Pat Mora wrote often about the southwest United
States, particularly Texas, where she was born and
raised. This poem seems to take place in that part
of the country. One indicator occurs in line 3,
where Mora mentions a cholla, which is a kind
of cactus indigenous to North American desert
areas. At the end of the poem, she describes
sand, which is common in the desert. Mora juxta-
poses these desert images with indicators of a
tornado. She mentions rain and lightning, which
commonly precede a tornado, and she mentions
the loud sound, which she describes as ‘‘howling.’’
People who have observed tornados frequently
describe them as arriving with a roar that sounds
like an approaching freight train.
Tornados can occur anywhere in the United
States, but they are most common in a line that
runs up the middle of the country, which clima-
tologists have dubbed Tornado Alley. This area
extends from central Texas through Kansas and
up into Illinois; ideal conditions for tornados tend
to form in this area. Hot, humid air moves north-
ward from the Gulf of Mexico. Warm, dry air
moves east from the Mojave Desert, and cold, dry
air comes down from the Northwest across the
Rocky Mountains. When these air currents meet
each other, a vacuum is formed. The warm air is
inclined to rise, creating an updraft, which falls
into a spinning pattern. The Earth’s gravitational
pull affects the motion of the moving air; in the
northern hemisphere, they almost always spin in a
counterclockwise direction, and in the southern
hemisphere the direction is clockwise.
The situation described in ‘‘Uncoiling’’ seems
to be that of a lower-level tornado. It is stronger
than atornado cyclone, which is a small tornado
that only lasts about an hour and does little dam-
age. A storm is not classified as a tornado until it
reachesspeedsofoverfortymilesanhour.The
standard scale for measuring the intensity of a
tornado is the Fujita Scale, with the following
range of categories: an F0, calledgale tornado,
with wind speeds of 40 to 72 miles per hour to an
F5incredible tornado, with wind speeds between
216 and 318 miles per hour. The damage described
in the poem indicates that this storm might rank
as an F2,significant tornado,withwindspeeds
between 113 and 157 miles per hour.Chicana Literature
Though Mora has lived in the United States for
her entire life, her writing is generally identified
with her Chicana roots.ChicanaandChicanoare
the female and male words used to designate peo-
ple whose ethnic backgrounds is a mix of Mexican
and Anglo American. The wordChicanocame to
prominence during the civil rights movements of
the 1960s, when it took on a strident, rebellious
connotation. During the 1970s, it was the pre-
ferred term for describing people of Mexican-
American descent, though in subsequent years
there was a trend away from the militant attitude
that the word came to imply, making its use less
and less common. It is still used more often when
one wants to emphasize the unity of the culture,
while the termMexican-Americantends to empha-
size the culture’s divided nature.
Chicano culture has its roots in the 1848
annexationoflargepartsofMexicoattheendof
the Mexican-American War. The people in the
land that changed hands, including parts of
Texas, Utah, Nevada, and areas of three other
states, had been Mexicans, but they abruptly
found themselves citizens of a new country when
the borders were redrawn. In the years that fol-
lowed, the Chicano culture spread from those peo-
ple and to other people of Mexico who immigrated
to the United States. Thus, by the latter part of the
twentieth century, Chicano culture was apparent
throughout the United States, even though it was
most prominent in the Southwest.
Twentieth-century Chicana literature was
mostly written in Spanishand not translated into
English. The post–World War II generation that
came of age in the 1960s changed that. For one
thing, the civil rights movement, which worked to
end segregation in the 1950s and 1960s, empha-
sizedculturalpride,avaluepickedupbyother
groups. The 1960s also gave rise to the feminist
movement in the United States, which promoted
thesamesortofprideofidentity.Femalewriters
from Mexican-Americanbackgrounds began to
tell stories of their own, stories about prejudiceUncoiling