Homecoming

Alvarez uses one stanza to encompass the 64 lines of “Homecoming.” Many of the lines are enjambed, meaning that they end in the middle, rather than at the end. The speaker describes their personal experience of returning home to the Dominican Republic for a wedding after moving away to the United States.

The first sentence of the poem establishes the location and occasion. The speaker is attending the wedding of their cousin, Carmen, to an American named Dick, at their uncle’s “finca” (Line 2), a Spanish word for a ranch. Alvarez also includes the word “rancho” (Line 20) later in the poem, which is closer to the English word and means the same thing. The main language of the poem is English, assuming a monolingual English-speaking audience (one that probably does not speak Spanish).

Alvarez makes the bilingual elements easy to understand, as well as subtly indicating that the speaker travels across borders, and the sea, to attend their cousin’s wedding. The speaker aims to make non-Spanish speakers comfortable by using only a few simple Spanish words, reflecting how the speaker’s uncle wants to make the groom’s family from Minnesota comfortable. The speaker’s uncle is referred to as “Tio” (Line 7), the Spanish word for uncle. He seats the speaker at the groom’s table “to show off [their] English” (Line 11). He wants his daughter’s wedding to go smoothly and to impress her new family.

In order to make his wedding plans go smoothly, Tio manages the various ranch employees. This includes “guards” (Line 1) who take the “guests’ bracelets / and wedding rings and put them in an armored truck” (Lines 2-3). The need to safeguard expensive jewelry indicates that there are Tensions Between the Working Class and the Upper Class and/or political unrest in the area. Locking up valuables illustrates fear; the upper-class residents of the ranch and/or the guests from America are afraid that valuables will be stolen. Tio also had staff members clean the bottom of the river “for the occasion” (Lines 6-7). The upper-class guests are catered to, making the working-class staff responsible for safety and cleanliness.

The second sentence of the poem gives more insight into the families of the bride and groom. Tio is invested in the success of the wedding because Carmen is his “only daughter” (Line 7). As a patriarchal owner of the ranch, he wants to show the guests that “she was valued” (Line 10). He cares about impressing “a bewildered group of sunburnt Minnesotans” (Line 9). His attention to the details of the wedding, as well as the speaker’s being bilingual, is meant to cast him and his family in a positive light. The speaker doesn’t describe any moments that they share with their cousin, nor the conversations they have with the groom’s family, but focuses on the moments they share with their uncle. This reveals how powerful men are possessive and inappropriate, exploring Gendered Entitlement to Places and Bodies.

In the third sentence of the poem, the speaker turns their attention to dancing with their uncle. He inappropriately is “fondling [their] shoulder blades beneath [their] bridesmaid’s gown / as if they were breasts” (Lines 12-13). Alvarez uses alliteration, where consonant sounds are repeated, in this case repeating the letter b, where blades are compared to breasts. When the speaker’s uncle talks to the speaker, he mentions their looks before their intelligence. He says they are “skinny / but pretty, at seventeen, and clever” (Lines 13-14). Their intelligence seems to be an afterthought. He is focused on their skinny shoulder blades. In the fourth sentence of the poem, Tio tells the speaker that they own the ranch. His compliments extend to highlighting how they are part of the upper-class landowners. Through his possessiveness over the speaker’s body, the poem explores the Gendered Entitlement to Places and Bodies. The speaker’s uncle wants the speaker to also feel possessive, to side with the male members of their class over the female members of the working class.

The fifth sentence of the poem focuses on the people working at the wedding. They move “blocks of ice” (Line 17) for the champagne, which is the only cold aspect of the hot island location. Tio wants the speaker to leave “that cold place, Vermont” (Line 15) to a place where ice can only keep beverages “lukewarm” (Line 18) because of the heat. Tio’s possessive attitude toward the ranch includes feeling possessive of the people who haul ice, as well as those who clean the river and run security. He says to the speaker, “all this is yours!” (Line 16). His problematic conception of ownership exemplifies the Tensions Between the Working Class and the Upper Class.

While they are working, the employees of the ranch eye the wedding cake, which is a replica of the ranch. This “dollhouse duplicate / of the family rancho” (Lines 19-20) is the central symbol of the poem. It is a dessert that represents the estate. The cake is made by the employees of the ranch, and it is the employees who ensure that the ranch makes money—they literally make the ranch what it is, as well as figuratively make the ranch in cake form. Alvarez includes specific details about the cake, such as how the shutters are made of marzipan, the cobbles (rocks) are made of almonds, the roses are made of whipped cream, and the miniature groom is made of chocolate. These gustatory details (details about the sense of taste) connect familiar foods with architectural elements of the ranch. In the sixth sentence of the poem, a “maiden aunt” (Line 21) keeps watch over the cake, touching it up “when the heat” (Line 23) starts to melt it. This adds to the sense of place; the Dominican Republic has hot weather.

In the seventh and eighth sentences, Lines 25 through 29, the speaker continues to describe their dance with Tio. He has had “too much rum” (Line 25), meaning that he is drunk; this leads to him teasing the speaker. He jokes about the speaker being away from home too long: The speaker’s “merengue had lost its Caribbean” (Line 29). A merengue is a type of dance that is danced socially in the Caribbean. In the United States, ballroom dance—which is performative and competitive—has appropriated the merengue. Losing the Caribbean style of dance means the dance is less about being part of a community of dancers and more about being a performer and a winner. In other words, he is teasing the speaker about losing their sense of culture and acting like an American person, not a Caribbean person.

In the ninth sentence, Lines 30 through 33, the speaker includes an element from another culture: paper lanterns. These “Chinese lanterns” (Line 30) are decorative and can be compared to how elements of Caribbean culture are used decoratively in ballroom dance—as a superficial style, rather than an important part of a culture. Alvarez also uses the lanterns that snap off and rise “into a purple postcard sky” (Line 32) as a symbol for children growing up and leaving home. She does this by juxtaposing the lanterns with a line of dialogue from a grandmother—“children all grow up too fast” (Line 33).

The 11th and 12th sentences, Lines 34 through 40, describe the groom’s family on the dance floor. They elaborate on the difference between Caribbean dancing and American, specifically Minnesotan, dancing. Instead of dancing merengue, they “danced a Charleston / and were pronounced good gringos with latino hearts” (Line 34). The Charleston is a dance from the roaring 1920s that was created by African Americans (originating in the juba dance) and became popular among white dancers. The other wedding guests consider the groom’s family “good” white people (“gringos” meaning white people), because they are willing to cut loose and dance. Dancing is an important part of their Latino culture but can be shared by people of different cultures.

The poem explores Intersections Between Caribbean and US Cultures. The groom’s little sister becomes a spectacle because of her Caucasian features. This mimics how white people treat people of color, with white women fondling women with coarse, curly hair. In “Homecoming,” the maids ask the girl “freckled with a week of beach, / her hair as blonde as movie stars” (Lines 36-37) to touch her hair. These working-class women are more respectful than privileged white women, but their request makes the girl feel uncomfortable. 

Lines 40 through 45 contain three complete sentences. Their length contrasts with the 11th and 12th sentences of the poem; the former sentences are shorter. Tio says “This is all yours” (Line 40), a repetition of his previous quote: “all this is yours!” (Line 16). He says this as he inappropriately presses himself against the speaker’s body. Through the juxtaposition of his words and actions, the poem explores Gendered Entitlement to Places and Bodies. The speaker’s so-called ownership includes being subservient to his patriarchal position. Meanwhile, the “workmen costumed in their workclothes danced / a workman’s jig” (Lines 42-43). They dance a different kind of dance than the upper class Caribbean people who dance merengue and the Minnesotans who dance the Charleston. Their dance is specific to their socioeconomic class—it is a workman’s jig. Through this anecdote, the poem explores Tensions Between the Working Class and the Upper Class.

Alvarez waits until Line 45 to include the groom: Dick. He and the bride don’t speak in the poem, like Tio and a grandmother. Dick is a standard name for a white male in America and can be read as an allusion to the Dick and Jane children’s books, a quintessential part of Americana. The name Dick contrasts with the more Caribbean name Carmen. Through the marriage of people with such different names, the poem explores the Intersections Between Caribbean and US Cultures.

Lines 45 through 50 contain one sentence, highlighting the shorter length of the previous three sentences in Lines 40-45. Longer sentences are often found in academic writing, with this long sentence describing the speaker’s academic journey. The form and content reflect one another. The speaker’s schooling is “paid for by sugar from the fields around us” (Line 47). Their upper-class family profits off of the labor of their working-class employees, and uses those profits, in part, to pay for their college education. However, the speaker says college classes “change my mind” (Line 46). The speaker learns “how one does not see the maids” (Line 49). In other words, the speaker begins to understand the erasure of the working class, or how upper-class people ignore their lower-class employees. In this way, the poem examines the Tensions Between the Working Class and the Upper Class.

Alvarez writes: “—It was too late, or early, to be wise—” (Line 51). At the moment of the wedding, the speaker doesn’t have access to the knowledge they will gain while in college: It is too early. It is also too late because they were already complicit in their upper-class family’s oppression of sugar cane workers by the time the wedding occurred.

The party has gone on so long that the sun is rising and the roosters crowd. The band responds by playing “Las Mananitas, a morning serenade” (Line 54). The song’s title can be more directly translated as little tomorrows (mañana meaning tomorrow and the suffix -itas being a diminutive). Alvarez’s translation of the song’s name indicates that she is writing for an English-speaking audience, rather than one bilingual in Spanish.

A new sentence begins with Line 54 and ends within Line 56, showcasing Alvarez’s enjambment. She writes: “Las Mananitas, a morning serenade. I had a vision / that I blamed on the champagne” (Lines 54-55). She puts the song about little mornings in the same line as the speaker’s vision. This associates the illumination of the speaker’s vision with the light of the sun. The poem develops this association in the following line, where the speaker describes their vision as the sugar cane fields burning. The fire in their vision can be associated with the fire that makes up the sun. This adds a dark and ominous tone. Burning sugar cane—a standard industry practice that continues into the 2020s—is very harmful to workers (Tweh, Natu. “The harsh labor conditions behind the Dominican Republic sugar ban.” WLRN, 2022).

The only action of the bride and groom that the speaker describes is how they sleepily cut the wedding cake. The speaker describes the guests and employees dancing, but not the couple’s first dance. The speaker’s focus is on the setting and the guests, and how these illustrate a class divide. The guests are too full of “drink and eggs, roast pig, and rice and beans” (Line 59) to have room for cake. Alvarez uses specific gustatory details to develop the sense of place. The wedding cake is eaten by “the maids and workmen” (Line 60). They have been busy serving food at the wedding and therefore had less time to eat than the guests. The cake is made from the sugar cane harvested by the working class. The poem describes them devouring the fruits of their own labor: They ate “windows, shutters, walls, pillars, doors, / made from the cane they had cut in the fields” (Lines 63-64). Their dangerous labor produces the cake’s main ingredient—sugar. Their labor also includes cleaning the windows and other listed parts of the house (the real versions, not made of sugar). The working-class employees are the ones who make the ranch financially viable, as well as make it into a comfortable home, for the upper class.