A major aspect of coming of age is establishing and understanding identity. In her poem, “For the Color of My Mother,” Cherrie Moraga comes to an understanding of both her identity and her mother’s through descriptions of faces.  In the lines, “at two / my upper lip split open /…the gash sewn back into a snarl / would last for years,”  Moraga describes a traumatic childhood event that literally scarred her face but also changed the way she looked and the way she thought of herself. By mentioning a memory from such a young age, she shows that she never forget the scar and that it affected her profoundly. She also describes her mother’s mouth and how it was an integral part of her roles as mother and breadwinner. When Cherrie is 5, she observes: “her mouth, pressed into mouthing English / mouthing yes yes yes / mouthing stoop lift carry / (sweating wet sighs into the field”. The sighs that come from her mother’s mouth represent the straining physical labor her mother had to do as a minority who didn’t speak very much English and needed to support her family. These roles all come together to create the mother’s identity, and by observing them, Cherrie is coming to an understanding of who her mother is and how that affects her own life.

A few lines later, Moraga implies that her mother passes away, and describes a wake-like scene: “dark women come to me / sitting in circles / I pass through their hands / the head of my mother”. The presence of the “dark women” speaks to Moraga and her mother’s identity as Chicanas. The act of passing the mother’s head around symbolizes passing around the mother’s physical representation of her identity; all aspects of her can be found represented in the head: the face, the eyes, the mouth, skin color, hair, etc. The women are not passing around the head of the mother, they are passing around her memory, her identity. Each “dark” woman, most likely family members and close friends, who touches her, is having an influence on her identity. This symbolizes that identities are strongly influenced by those who raise us, those we grow up with, those who surround us. No person’s identity exists inside a vacuum. This symbolic passing around of her mother’s identity demonstrates an integral part of Moraga’s coming of age, and how witnessing her mother’s death and coping with it helped shape her as a woman. The final lines emphasize this coming of age moment, “they cradle her silence / nodding to me”. The women acknowledge the passing of the mother and  while they are mourning and remembering, they turn to Moraga, the daughter, almost expectingly but also with encouragement. She is one of them now, a woman on her own, surrounded by her people, shaped by the memory and identity of her mother, and given the acceptance and support to be.