Answer:
“My Mother Pieced Quilts,” first published in 1976 in the anthology Festival de Flor y Canto: An Anthology of Chicano Literature, is a meditation poem using a mother’s handmade quilt as means to access and explore the poet’s childhood memories. As in a quilt, which is made from many different scraps of material sewn together by a single hand, the poem pieces together memories in order to show the reader a complete picture of the speaker’s childhood and her mother’s strong influence. The poet uses many vivid images throughout to help contrast the good memories with the unpleasant, weaving them together into the larger framework of the poem. Through her close observation and careful description of detail, by the end of the poem Acosta is able to place her mother’s hobby of piecing quilts in a much larger context, transforming the everyday day practice of quilting into a ritual closer to song and prayer: the quilts themselves are described as “armed / ready / shouting / celebrating.”
Explanation:
