Suarez's 'Isla': Comparing Oneself To Godzilla

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Isla, a poem written by author Virgil Suarez, in 2000, refers to how a young immigrant boy feels, compared to Godzilla. Godzilla, is a series of movies about a “fictitious giant monster spawned from the waste of nuclear tests, and is discovered in the sea and rises to threaten Japan. The only hope of stopping Godzilla is the oxygen destroyer, a weapon as deadly and as morally troubling as the atomic bombs that created the monster”(Encyclopaedia Britannica,2017). Poet Virgil Suárez left Cuba with his family when he was just 12. His family eventually settled in the United States(poetryfoundation.org, n.d). Virgil Suarez is comparing himself to Godzilla. He feels lonely and unwanted ,and how he had known this pain from an early age.
In Los Angeles I grew up watching The Three Stooges,
The Little Rascals, Speed Racer, and the Godzilla movies,
those my mother called "Los Monstros," and though I didn't
yet speak English, I understood why such a creature would,
upon being woken up from its centuries-long slumber, rise
and destroy Tokyo's buildings, cars, people—I understood
by the age of twelve what it meant to be unwanted, exiled,
how you move from one …show more content…

He grew up watching television show’s like other kids, but one show stood out to him in particular, Godzilla. Suarez wasn’t able to speak english and express himself, but he was able to do so through the movie Godzilla. Godzilla was awoken from the sea, and he started chaos upon Japan, through destruction and is not wanted there. Suarez’s and his family moved away from Cuba in 1962, when he was 12, only to land in the United States. This was the time when the Cuban Missile Crisis was occurring. “The Cuban Missile Crisis of October 1962 was a direct and dangerous confrontation between the United States and the Soviet Union during the Cold War and was the moment when the two superpowers came closest to nuclear conflict”(www.history.state.gov,

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