Francisco X. Alarcón is a 20th century Mexican-American writer who is most notable for writing poems about his Mexican heritage and being a strong advocate for gay Chicano literature. In The X in My Name, Alarcón writes a short poem about the meaning behind the X in his name and the effects of using the X throughout history and specifically in Latin America. Typically, when an illiterate person was asked to sign an official document they would place an X on the signature line because they did not know how to write their name. In this poem, Alarcón writes about the unknown consequence of the illiterate signing their name on a document they were unable to read. By stating the contract itself is “deceiving”, Alarcón makes the claim that the illiterate bound their lives to contracts thus creating a thought provoking argument that could mean the contracts placed the illiterate into servitude for the remainder of their lives with a promise of a better life. 

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