Adela Najarro’s poem, “My Mother’s High Heel Shoes” illustrates the feminine heroines the speaker’s mother was influenced by when she was seventeen. These heroines are elegant white actresses that opened a door of fantasy for the narrator’s mother: Claudette Colbert, Joan Crawford, Esther Williams. This poem dramatizes the conflict between truth, escape and fantasy, particularly as this conflict relates to what the speaker’s mother seems to paint and what the speaker must gather from a "8x10 glossy."

Beginning in the very first line, the punctuation is terse and the lines do not develop a coherent picture, even though they appear to describe a setting. The sounds of the words contribute to the meaning of the poem. There are two speakers: mother and daughter. The tone of the poem in the very first lines suggests that the speaker is interviewing her mother. Thus, there is a tension between the lines: “A fat man in white. A polished stone floor. Marble or granite” (1). The first line posits the speaker and the mother as interviewer and interviewee.

The speaker addresses her mother in the past where the sun is vibrant and in the present where they head to the beach as a family “on an overcast day” (29). The speaker’s state of mind is nestled between her mother’s youth, to the present moment, as she asks, “How close can I get to the first bikini on Ponoloya?” (15). The tone shifts: to the speaker longing for her mother’s innocence and rites of passage. Here, the reader is able to connect with the speaker, as though the reader has discovered the 8x10 glossy. The fact that the speaker states that she lost the 8x10 glossy implies that the image of her mother is still ingrained in her psyche. Also, the line is positioned inside and stresses the intimate secret she is sharing with the reader.

The sun drapes freckles across my mother’s shoulders.
Ponoloya, a beach in Nicaragua. She is seventeen and pretty.
I lost the 8x10 glossy.
Each eyelash curved. An ivory cheek. Joan Crawford lips.

I think I took it to school for a class

project on family history and autobiography. In the second drawer of her dresser, a satin slip the size of a Mead college-ruled notebook (8-14).

As the speaker unearths her mother’s personality:
My mother spots a picture in a Paris magazine or one
de los Estados Unidos and asks the seamstress to make her one just
like it (22-24).

Again, the position of the word “like it” illuminates the intimacy of her mother’s body in relationship to European women. Even though the title is “My Mother’s High Heel Shoes,” there is not a reference to her mother’s high heel shoes. But there is mention of a shoebox. A shoebox is usually re-used to place objects that someone wants to hold onto. A shoebox, thus, turns into a vessel that holds secrets and when found; it can be among a : “a satin slip the size of a Mead college-ruled notebook” (14). The fact that the speaker compares the satin slip to something related to school relates to the speaker’s need to disassociate with her mother’s sexuality. And the fact that the mother’s high heel shoes are not mentioned implies that the speaker entered her mother’s room without permission. Even though the speaker reveals that she took it to class for a project on family history, the reader feels as if she should not trust the speaker. Interestingly, “stuck in a castle turret” emphasizes her mother’s role of being protected and sheltered and living in a fantasy world. In the end:
"My father, my brother and I are added to a shoebox" (33).

~Melissa Lozano