Tomas Rivera is a very emotional writer in that he writes with his heart on his sleeves and gets readers to feel the emotions he conveys to them. In the short piece, “What his mother never knew…” he plays on our emotions and empathy. It portrays a son doing something so simple to keep his mother going even in tough times. She was reassured that, even in hard times, that the spirits were there with her, and that allowed her to be the best person she could be for herself as well as her family.
That is also what’s so impressive about Rivera’s writing, is that it can give you the whole story without actually telling you exactly what’s going on. He writes that the son “would drink the glass of water that she left under the bed for the spirits.” And because the mother would find it empty every morning she “continued doing her duty.” We don’t know, and are never told, exactly what her duty is, but from the whole passage we can understand that she needs something to keep her moving forward, and that the son provides that for her.