First Muse, By Julia Alvarez

        First Muse is a poem written by Julia Alvarez about how she feels that she can't write due to her ethnicity. She hears an unnamed famous poet say "One can only write poems in the tongue in which one first said mother,". She is damaged by this, claiming that this person is correct and she needs to burn all of her English poems, as Alvarez speaks Spanish natively. She is feeling terrible about how her career has been ruined by this remark. As she is feeling her worst, a commercial comes on television advertising Chiquita Bananas. Alvarez suddenly gains an enormous amount of confidence, as the singing and dancing banana has a Latin American accent but is singing in English. Something clicks inside her and she gains confidence in writing in English because of this banana.
         The fact that the Chiquita Banana is obviously from Latin America, but is representing this company in America shows that Latin America and America can be connected perfectly and in harmony. The Chiquita Banana has shown Alvarez that you can fit in perfectly fine with the people of America.