memorialize a lost art, but rather celebrates its
continuation as ‘‘the lame healer and his grand-
son’’ gather ‘‘branches and bark, / with boto ́n
de oro’’ (21). Other poems in the volume also
pay tribute to such individuals, with ‘‘Strong
Women,’’ the penultimate poem, providing a gen-
eralized celebration and invocation for ongoing
learning. This connection to the land that Mora
believes must be maintained even in the cities, as
indicated in ‘‘Divisadero Street,’’ can be under-
stood in terms of a strategy for survival against
assimilation and disenfranchisement and a basis
for reestablishing and preserving community. As
Rebolledo and Rivero note, ‘‘the city, shining
land of opportunity, signals only struggle and
often destruction for [Chicanas], their families,
and their culture’’ (160).
Having introduced curanderas in Chants,
Mora returns to them inCommunion,asinthe
poems previously mentioned, and clarifies their
importance in Nepantlain her essay, ‘‘Poet as
Curandera.’’ The traditional healer is a part of
her heritage, providing Mora with a name that
defines her own artistry as an act of healing
through ‘‘witnessing’’ to her culture. In that first
poem ofChants, ‘‘Bribe,’’ she identifies her writing
with the land and with the most ancient elements
of her heritage, embodying what she has come to
understand by the time of writing ‘‘Poet as Cura-
ndera’’: ‘‘learned wisdom, ritual, solutions spring-
ing from the land. All are essential to curanderas,
who listen to voices from the past and the present,
who evolve from their culture’’ (126). The people
and the land interweave in Mora’s conceptions of
cultural conservation and the word-healing of
poetry. In ‘‘The Border: A Glare of Truth,’’ Mora
defines the origin of her being as poetcurandera:
When I lived on the border, I had the privilege
accorded to a small percentage of our citizens. I
daily saw the native land of my grandparents. I
grew up in the Chihuahua desert, as did they, only
we grew up on different sides of the Rio Grande.
That desert—its firmness resilience, and fierceness,
its whispered chants and tempestuous dance, its
wisdom and majesty—shaped us as geography
always shapes it inhabitants. The desert persists
in me, both inspiring and compelling me to sing
about her and her people, their roots and blooms
and thorns. (13)
With that view of both sides of the river, Pat
Mora opposes any national monoculture, because
she knows, first of all, that place is not determined
by national boundaries. A culture can and must
cross political boundaries to remain true to its
own place of existence. The Chihuahua desert
and the lifestyles of the peoples who have lived
there have mutually evolved over time. They were
divided in an instant by a border, but their roots
remain a tapestry woven beneath the surface,
crisscrossing—even as the people continue to do
so today—the Rio Grande. She opposes any
national monoculture in the U.S. and elsewhere,
second of all, because there exists an implicit
ecological sensibility of multi-culturality (the exis-
tence of multiple cultures existing within geopol-
itical boundaries) within her concerns for the
cultural conservation of Latina heritage. Even
her decision to use ‘‘Latina’’ and ‘‘Latino’’ more
frequently than other labels reflects her sense of
this multi-culturality, because it seeks to unite
‘‘Puerto Ricans, Cubans, Mexican Americans,
Central and South Americans,’’ whom she defines
as interrelated, but certainly not identical (7).
In labeling Mora’s sensibility an ecological
multi-culturality, I conceptualize ‘‘ecological’’ here
in two related ways. One, I see it in terms of
ecosystem, as metonym and metaphor for a set of
necessary human-land relationships. As Mora con-
tends, ‘‘because humans are part of this natural
world, we need to ensure that our unique expres-
sions on this earth, whether art forms or languages,
be a greater part of our national and international
conservation effort’’ (25). Only if a person under-
stands and accepts what a curandera does, will that
person then appreciate the plants upon which she
relies for her power. Two, I see it in terms of
environment as a component of cultural heritage
and continuity. As Rebolledo notes, for
Hispanic writers... the southwestern land-
scape... meant a long tradition of families not
only tied to the land but nourished by it....
Recent writers have looked to the rich and
varied heritage of the past to find a regenerative
and transforming sense of identity in the
present and for the future. (96–97)
The very concept of la mestiza that Mora
raises, referring inNepantlato the work of Gloria
Anzaldu ́a, as a cultural melding occurring in a
specific region that need not efface difference
between peoples, but recognizes multiplicity within
the individual, the community, and the commun-
ities of the region, also forms a component of an
ecological multi-culturality. And when Mora refers
to herself as a ‘‘Texican,’’ that too is a manifestation
of this multi-culturality characteristic of border-
lands and the dynamic tension that resonates
across the desert. It also recognizes, however, thatUncoiling