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Emplumada is Lorna Dee Cervantes’s first book, a collection of poems remarkable for their surface clarity, precision of image, and emotional urgency. Rooted in her Chicana heritage, these poems illuminate the American experience of the last quarter century and, at a time when much of what is merely fashionable in American poetry is recondite and exclusive, Cervantes has the ability to speak to and for a large audience.
Lorna Dee Cervantes is a pivotal figure throughout the Chicano literary movement and this book gathers 30 years' worth of essays and articles about her as well as interviews with her. A fifth-generation Californian of Mexican and Native American (Chumasch) heritage, Cervantes is widely considered one of the most important Latina poets who drew tremendous power from her struggles in the literary and political trenches. This work explores the boundaries between language and experience and features a new collection of poems by the dynamic poet.
Flavored by the author's Chicana and Native American roots, this poetry collection explores eroticism and sensuality while keeping to the confines of 100 words. Simultaneously intelligent and humorous, this book investigates the themes of passion and desire as it conveys intense political ideas and reactions. Written by a woman of color, this compilation will resonate with audiences beyond her race and ethnicity.
Cervantes stretches the resources of language, imagery and the dialectics of love, hunger and aesthetics.
'I am more than the smell / of fear grasping my collar, ' Lorna Dee Cervantes tells us in one of the powerful poems in this new collection. Indeed, she is. But Cervantes' brilliance here is her ability to speak the fear as well as the resistance to that fear. These are magnificent poems. I read (the) book in the dark of the night. The poems glowed like stars.--Margaret Randall ...a keenly observed, politically charged, uncompromising tour of the poet's mind and our world. This book might be the instruction manual we all need.--Camille Dungy, Orion Magazine Poetry.
A multicultural array of poets explore what it is means to be American This powerful and moving collection of poems stretches across the boundaries of skin color, language, ethnicity, and religion to give voice to the lives and experiences of ethnic Americans. With extraordinary honesty, dignity, and insight, these poems address common themes of assimilation, communication, and self-perception. In recording everyday life in our many American cultures, they displace the myths and stereotypes that pervade our culture. Unsettling America includes work by: Amiri Baraka Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni Rita Dove Louise Erdich Jessica Hagedorn Joy Harjo Garrett Hongo Li-Young Lee Pat Mora Naomi Shihab Nye Marye Percy Ishmael Reed Alberto Rios Ntozake Shange Gary Soto Lawrence Ferlinghetti Nellie Wong David Hernandez Mary TallMountain ...and many more.
Discusses 4 Chicana poets' "dilemmas of their dual relationship to American and Mexican societies and of their dual identity as Chicanas and as women writing in a contemporary setting."
Struggles over space and resistance to geographic displacement gave birth to much of Chicano history and culture. In this pathfinding book, Raúl Villa explores how California Chicano/a activists, journalists, writers, artists, and musicians have used expressive culture to oppose the community-destroying forces of urban renewal programs and massive freeway development and to create and defend a sense of Chicano place-identity. Villa opens with a historical overview that shows how Chicano communities and culture have grown in response to conflicts over space ever since the United States' annexation of Mexican territory in the 1840s. Then, turning to the work of contemporary members of the Chicano intelligentsia such as Helena Maria Viramontes, Ron Arias, and Lorna Dee Cervantes, Villa demonstrates how their expressive practices re-imagine and re-create the dominant urban space as a community enabling place. In doing so, he illuminates the endless interplay in which cultural texts and practices are shaped by and act upon their social and political contexts.
A Study Guide for Lorna Dee Cervantes's "Refugee Ship", excerpted from Gale's acclaimed Poetry for Students. This concise study guide includes plot summary; character analysis; author biography; study questions; historical context; suggestions for further reading; and much more. For any literature project, trust Poetry for Studentsfor all of your research needs.
Offers examples of oral narratives and literature from the nineteenth century to the present