Question

I’ve packed my galoshes
and three packets of tomato seeds. Denise calls them
love apples. My father says where we’re going
they won’t grow.

Read the excerpt from “Mericans.”

She’s so busy taking Junior’s picture, she doesn’t notice me and Keeks.
“Hey, Michele, Keeks. You guys want gum?”
“But you speak English!”
“Yeah,” my brother says, “we’re Mericans.”

Which of the statements best describes both excerpts?
The speaker in Okita’s poem uses the tomato, a food native to the Americas, to highlight the speaker’s American identity, while the speaker in “Mericans” uses the English language to give her characters an American identity
The writers use bleak imagery to convey the sense of isolation they feel from their respective cultures.
The speaker of Okita’s poem feels a sense of loss at the prospect of being moved from her home, while the speaker of Cisneros’s short story longs to leave her current location and return to the United States.
Both speakers frequently refer to their cultural identities, which they strongly prefer over an American identity.

Answer 1

The first statement is best.

Both excerpts use symbols of American identity—the tomato seeds (a New World crop) in Okita’s poem and the English language in Cisneros’s “Mericans”—to signal the speakers’ connection to being American.