When efforts to raise funds for the Statue of Liberty slowed, organizers invited Emma Lazarus to write a poem to stoke interest for a fundraising auction. Though initially hesitant, she ultimately decided to use the occasion as an opportunity to make a comment about immigration. The poem that resulted was “The New Colossus,” a sonnet that frames the Statue of Liberty not simply as a symbol of American democracy, but as a beacon of hope for the world’s “homeless” (line 13). The poem’s speaker opens with an allusion to a statue known as the Colossus of Rhodes, which once straddled the inlet to the harbor on the Greek island of Rhodes. Rejecting this patriarchal figure and his commanding attitude of imperial conquest, the speaker announces the arrival of a new and distinctly maternal colossus—a “Mother of Exiles” (line 6). In the poem’s rousing final lines, the speaker ventriloquizes the voice of the New Colossus, who otherwise speaks “with silent lips” (line 10). Directly addressing the nations of the Old World, she explicitly welcomes their tired, their hungry, and their poor. In doing so, this Mother of Exiles emphasizes how important it is for the U.S. to remain open to others.

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