Pat Mora

American bilingual poet and children's author

• Born: January 19, 1942
• Place of Birth: El Paso, Texas

Early Life

Patricia Estella Mora was born in 1942 on the United States-Mexico border in El Paso, Texas, to Raúl Antonio Mora and Estela Delgado Mora. She was raised in a bilingual home but mainly spoke Spanish, given that both sets of her grandparents came to El Paso during the Mexican Revolution and did not speak English. Mora attended Catholic schools in El Paso, where she rarely saw reflections of her Mexican culture and Spanish language in the curriculum. Instead, she spent her childhood in two disparate worlds: one filled with beautiful Spanish words and rich Mexican traditions and culture, the other filled with the language of necessity and strict rules.

After Mora graduated high school, she attended Texas Western College (now the University of Texas at El Paso, UTEP), from which she graduated in 1963 with a bachelor of arts degree. In July 1963, Mora married William H. Burnside, Jr., with whom she would have three children: William Roy, Elizabeth Anne, and Cecilia Anne. She then became an English and Spanish teacher for the El Paso Independent School District, where she worked until 1966. A year later, Mora earned a master of arts degree in English from UTEP.

From 1971 to 1978, Mora worked as a part-time instructor for El Paso Community College and then moved to UTEP, where she was an English instructor. In 1981, she transitioned into university administration. She and her husband divorced that year, and she began to focus her energy on exploring her cultural heritage through her writing.

Mora published poems in various magazines throughout the late 1970s, but it wasn’t until 1984 that she published her first book of poetry, Chants, which explores gender roles and inequalities within the Chicano culture. In May 1984, she married her second husband, Vernon Lee Scarborough, a professor and archeologist. Two years later, Mora published Borders (1986), her second collection of poetry, drawing upon many of her experiences growing up on the border between two countries, two cultures, and two languages. The collection also continued to explore her feminist perspective, addressing borders that society constructs between genders.

Immediately, Mora began receiving honors and recognition for her poetry. Both Chants and Borders were acknowledged with Southwest Book Awards from the Border Regional Library, and she was named to the El Paso Herald-Post Writers Hall of Fame in 1988. The same year that she published Borders, Mora received a fellowship from the W. K. Kellogg Foundation to explore culture preservation around the world.

In 1989, Mora left academia to begin writing full time. Two years later, she published her third poetry collection, Communion (1991), describing the lives of women around the world and further exploring the chasm between the sexes. This was followed by Nepantla: Essays from the Land in the Middle (1993), an autobiographical collection of poignant reflections on what it means to be a woman in the United States and in various countries in Latin America. Critics have said that both of these books demonstrated a newfound depth in her writing and were greatly influenced by Mora’s research funded by the Kellogg Foundation.

Although Mora would publish a handful of other works for adults, including the 2018 poetry collection Encantado, these writings mark a noticeable end to her early writing career, making way for her life’s work as a literacy advocate and children’s and young-adult author.

Work in Children's Literature and Literacy

Growing up on the border surrounded by Spanish speakers and attending a school where she rarely heard the language or saw representations of Latinos in her school books greatly influenced Mora’s childhood experiences. As a result, she made it her life’s work to provide reflections of the Latino cultural experience in children’s literature in order to strengthen the ethnic identity of Latino children and foster the intercultural understanding of non-Latino children and educators.

In 1992, Mora published her first book for children, A Birthday Basket for Tía. Based on experiences from Mora’s own family involving her daughter and aunt, this picture book signified the beginning of the author’s work for children celebrating Latino culture, family, strong female characters, and the Spanish language. The publication also marked Mora’s journey to promote literacy and spread “bookjoy”—a term she coined to describe the deeply emotional and joyful response that readers have to books that they identify with and enjoy.

Two years later, in 1994, Mora published three more children’s picture books—Listen to the Desert/Oye al desierto; Agua, Agua, Agua; and Pablo’s Tree—and a collection of children’s poetry, The Desert Is My Mother/El desierto es mi madre. Many of these works celebrate the beauty of Southwestern landscape and pay tribute to the desert. Over the next two years, Mora published two more children’s poetry books and two children’s folktales, all imbued with elements of Latino culture and Spanish.

In 1997, Mora published one of her most notable children’s books, Tomás and the Library Lady, an illustrated biography highlighting the importance of the books in the life of famous Mexican American educator Dr. Tomás Rivera. While many of her other children’s books received literary honors, this was Mora’s first title to receive two awards specifically for Latino children’s literature: the 1998 Tomás Rivera Mexican American Children’s Book Award, administered by Texas State University at San Marcos, and a 1997 Américas Award for Children’s and Young Adult Literature Commended Title, administered by the Consortium of Latin American Studies Programs.

Mora’s book The Rainbow Tulip (1999) highlights her mother’s experiences as a bilingual, bicultural immigrant child in first grade working to forge harmony between her home and school lives. She published dozens of other works for children over the next decades. Each of these books celebrates the contributions of Latinos or intercultural connections between Latino and non-Latino children.

In addition to writing, Mora has worked tirelessly to establish the family literacy celebration known as El Día de los Niños/El Día de los Libros (The Day of Children/The Day of Books) or Día for short, which she launched in 1996. The holiday is celebrated across the United States on April 30. Her intent was to create a holiday that would encourage families, educators, and other child advocates to celebrate children as well as linguistic and cultural diversity through the use of high-quality, multicultural children’s books. She provides reading-, diversity-, and poetry-related resources for educators on her website and gives talks about the importance of reading.

Throughout her career as an author, literacy advocate, and educator, Mora has received numerous awards. She was named an honorary member of the American Library Association and has been granted honorary doctorates by North Carolina State University and the State University of New York at Buffalo. She also received a Distinguished Alumna Award from the University of Texas at El Paso (2004), the University of Southern Mississippi’s Medallion for Outstanding Contributions to Children’s Literature (2008), the Virginia Hamilton Literary Award from Kent State University (2017), the Coleen Salley Storytelling Award from the University of Southern Mississippi (2017), and the Lon Tinkle Award for Lifetime Achievement from the Texas Institute of Letters (2017). She holds a lifetime membership on the United States Board on Books for Young People. Four of Mora's books—Yum! ¡Mmm! ¡Qué Rico! America's Sproutings, Gracias/Thanks, Book Fiesta!, and Water Rolls, Water Rises—were named American Library Association Notable Books in 2008, 2009, 2010, and 2015, respectively. Mora and her husband, Vern Scarborough, lived in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

Significance

In a time when Chicano writers and poets were beginning to add to the cultural fabric of twentieth-century American literature, Mora emerged as one of the most diverse and distinguished Latino writers, creating poetry and books for children and adults. Her work paved the way for future generations of Latino children’s authors, helped to establish the field of Latino children’s literature, and solidified the importance of creating cultural works for children that represent one of the largest ethnic minority groups in the United States. Mora has also been an assiduous advocate for promoting bicultural, bilingual literacy in schools and libraries.

Author Works

Children's/Young Adult Literature:

A Birthday Basket for Tía, 1992

Qué dice el desierto?, 1993 (Diana McKnight, illustrator)

Agua, Agua, Agua, 1994

Pablo's Tree, 1994 (with Cecily Lang)

Listen to the Desert/Oye al desierto, 1994 (Francisco X. Mora, illustrator)

The Gift of the Poinsettia/El regalo de la flor de nochebuena, 1995 (with Charles Ramirez Berg)

The Race of Toad and Deer, 1995 (revised 2001)

Tomás and the Library Lady, 1997 (also known as Thomas and the Library Lady, 1997; Tomás y la señora de la biblioteca, 1997, Raúl Colón, illustrator; Amy Prince, translator)

Delicious Hullabaloo/Pachanga deliciosa, 1998

The Rainbow Tulip, 1999 (Elizabeth Sayles, illustrator)

The Night the Moon Fell: A Maya Myth, 2000 (Domi, illustrator)

The Bakery Lady/La señora de la panadería, 2001

A Library for Juana: The World of Sor Juana Inés, 2002 (Beatriz Vidal, illustrator)

Maria Paints the Hills, 2002 (Maria Hesch, illustrator)

The Song of Francis and the Animals, 2005 (art by David Frampton)

Doña Flor: A Tall Tale About a Giant Woman with a Great Big Heart, 2005 (Doña Flor: Un cuento de una mujer gigante con un gran corazón, 2005; Raúl Colón, illustrator)

Let's Eat! ¡A comer!, 2008 (Maribel Suárez, illustrator)

Abuelos, 2008

Join Hands! The Ways We Celebrate Life, 2008

Sweet Dreams/Dulces Suenos, 2008 (Maribel Suárez, illustrator)

Here Kitty, Kitty! ¡Ven gatita, ven!, 2008 (Maribel Suárez, illustrator)

Gracias/Thanks, 2009 (John Parra, illustrator)

Piñata in a Pine Tree: A Latino Twelve Days of Christmas, 2009 (Magaly Morales, illustrator)

Book Fiesta! Celebrate Children's Day/Book Day; Celebremos el día de los niños/El día de los libros, 2009 (Rafael López, illustrator)

Wiggling Pockets/Los bolsillos saltarines, 2009

Beautiful Lady: Our Lady of Guadalupe, 2012 (La Hermosa Señora: Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe, 2012; Steve Johnson & Lou Fancher, illustrators)

Water Rolls, Water Rises/El agua rueda, el agua sube, 2014 (Meilo So, illustrator)

Bravo, Chico Canta! Bravo!, 2014 (with Libby Martinez; Amelia Lau Carling, illustrator)

I Pledge Allegiance, 2014 (with Libby Martinez; Patrice Barton, illustrator)

Remembering Day/El día de los muertos, 2015 (Robert Casilla, illustrator)

Bookjoy, Wordjoy, 2018

Library for Juana: The World of Sor Juana Inés, 2019

My Singing Nana, 2019

My Magic Wand: Growing with the Seasons, 2021 (Amber Alvarez, illustrator)

Nonfiction:

Nepantla: Essays from the Land in the Middle, 1993

House of Houses, 1997

Zing! Seven Creativity Practices for Educators and Students, 2010

Poetry:

Chants, 1984

Borders, 1986

Communion, 1991

The Desert Is My Mother/El desierto es mi madre, 1994 (art by Daniel Lechón)

Confetti: Poems for Children, 1995 (Confeti: Poemas para niños, 2006; Enrique O. Sánchez, illustrator)

Agua santa/Holy Water, 1995

Uno, dos, tres/One, Two, Three, 1996 (Barbara Lavallee, illustrator)

Aunt Carmen's Book of Practical Saints, 1997

The Big Sky, 1998 (Steve Jenkins, illustrator)

My Own True Name: New and Selected Poems for Young Adults, 1984-1999, 2001 (Anthony Accardo, illustrator)

Adobe Odes, 2006

Marimba! Animales from A to Z, 2006 (Doug Cushman, illustrator)

Yum! Mmmm! ¡Qué Rico! America's Sproutings/Brotes de las Américas, 2007 (Rafael López, illustrator)

Dizzy in Your Eyes: Poems about Love, 2010

Encantado: Desert Monologues, 2018

Edited Text:

Love to Mamá: A Tribute to Mothers, 2001 (Paula S. Barragán, illustrator)

Bibliography

"About Pat Mora and Her Books." Pat Mora, 2020, www.patmora.com/bios-photos-into. Accessed 3 Sept. 2024.

Marcovitz, Hal. Who Wrote That? Pat Mora. Chelsea House, 2013.

Mora, Pat. “Confessions of a Latina Author.” The New Advocate, vol. 11, Fall 1998, pp. 279-290.

Mora, Pat. House of Houses. U of Arizona P, 2008.

Mora, Pat. Interview by Bruce Dick. In A Poet’s Truth: Conversations with Latino/Latina Poets. U of Arizona P, 2003.

"Pat Mora." Poetry Foundation, 2024, www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/pat-mora. Accessed 3 Sept. 2024.

Rowlands, Kathleen Dudden. “The Influence of Pat Mora: How—and Why—Literacy Becomes Political.” Children and Libraries, vol. 5, Spring 2007, pp. 20-25.