Download or read book The Latin Deli written by Judith Ortiz Cofer and published by University of Georgia Press. This book was released on 2012-03-15 with total page 186 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Reviewing her novel, The Line of the Sun, the New York Times Book Review hailed Judith Ortiz Cofer as "a writer of authentic gifts, with a genuine and important story to tell." Those gifts are on abundant display in The Latin Deli, an evocative collection of poetry, personal essays, and short fiction in which the dominant subject—the lives of Puerto Ricans in a New Jersey barrio—is drawn from the author's own childhood. Following the directive of Emily Dickinson to "tell all the Truth but tell it slant," Cofer approaches her material from a variety of angles. An acute yearning for a distant homeland is the poignant theme of the title poem, which opens the collection. Cofer's lines introduce us "to a woman of no-age" presiding over a small store whose wares—Bustelo coffee, jamon y queso, "green plantains hanging in stalks like votive offerings"—must satisfy, however imperfectly, the needs and hungers of those who have left the islands for the urban Northeast. Similarly affecting is the short story "Nada," in which a mother's grief over a son killed in Vietnam gradually consumes her. Refusing the medals and flag proferred by the government ("Tell the Mr. President of the United States what I say: No, gracias."), as well as the consolations of her neighbors in El Building, the woman begins to give away all her possessions The narrator, upon hearing the woman say "nada," reflects, "I tell you, that word is like a drain that sucks everything down." As rooted as they are in a particular immigrant experience, Cofer's writings are also rich in universal themes, especially those involving the pains, confusions, and wonders of growing up. While set in the barrio, the essays "American History," "Not for Sale," and "The Paterson Public Library" deal with concerns that could be those of any sensitive young woman coming of age in America: romantic attachments, relations with parents and peers, the search for knowledge. And in poems such as "The Life of an Echo" and "The Purpose of Nuns," Cofer offers eloquent ruminations on the mystery of desire and the conflict between the flesh and the spirit. Cofer's ambitions as a writer are perhaps stated most explicitly in the essay "The Myth of the Latin Woman: I Just Met a Girl Named Maria." Recalling one of her early poems, she notes how its message is still her mission: to transcend the limitations of language, to connect "through the human-to-human channel of art."

Download or read book A Study Guide for Judith Cofer s The Latin Deli An Ars Poetica written by Gale, Cengage Learning and published by Gale, Cengage Learning . This book was released on 2016 with total page 27 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Study Guide for Judith Cofer's "The Latin Deli: An Ars Poetica," 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 Students for all of your research needs.

Download or read book POETRY FOR STUDENTS written by CENGAGE LEARNING. GALE and published by . This book was released on 2016 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book A Study Guide for Judith Cofer s The Latin Deli written by Cengage Learning Gale and published by . This book was released on 2017-07-25 with total page 38 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Silent Dancing written by Judith Ortiz Cofer and published by Arte Publico Press. This book was released on 1991-01-01 with total page 172 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Silent Dancing is a personal narrative made up of Judith Ortiz CoferÍs recollections of the bilingual-bicultural childhood which forged her personality as a writer and artist. The daughter of a Navy man, Ortiz Cofer was born in Puerto Rico and spent her childhood shuttling between the small island of her birth and New Jersey. In fluid, clear, incisive prose, as well as in the poems she includes to highlight the major themes, Ortiz Cofer has added an important chapter to autobiography, Hispanic American Creativity and womenÍs literature. Silent Dancing has been awarded the 1991 PEN/Martha Albrand Special Citation for Nonfiction and has been selected for The New York Public LibraryÍs 1991 Best Books for the Teen Age.

Download or read book The Line of the Sun written by Judith Ortiz Cofer and published by University of Georgia Press. This book was released on 2011-03-15 with total page 302 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “A colorful, revealing portrait of Puerto Rican culture and domestic relationship” from the award-winning poet and author of An Island Like You (Publishers Weekly). Set in the 1950s and 1960s, The Line of the Sun moves from a rural Puerto Rican village to a tough immigrant housing project in New Jersey, telling the story of a Hispanic family’s struggle to become part of a new culture without relinquishing the old. At the story’s center is Guzmán, an almost mythic figure whose adventures and exile, salvation and return leave him a broken man but preserve his place in the heart and imagination of his niece, who is his secret biographer. “Cofer . . . reveals herself to be a prose writer of evocatively lyrical authority, a novelist of historical compass and sensitivity . . . One recognizes in the rich weave and vigorous elegance of the language of The Line of the Sun a writer of authentic gifts, with a genuine and important story to tell.”—The New York Times Book Review “There is great strength in the way Cofer evokes the fierce, loving, and brave Latin spirit that is the novel’s real theme.”—Joyce Johnson, National Book Critics Circle Award-winning author “The Line of the Sun reads like a dream, from the beautifully realized description of the deceptive Paradise Lost, to the utterly different but equally vivid world of the urban North . . . This is a splendid first novel.”—The State (Columbia, South Carolina) “The writing in this superb novel stuns and surprises at every turn. Its sensuality and imagery . . . are riveting.”—The San Juan Star

Download or read book Versos sencillos Simple Verses written by Jos? MartÕ and published by Arte Publico Press. This book was released on 1997-10-01 with total page 132 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Poetry. SIMPLE VERSES is the first complete English translation of the classic collection VERSOS SENCILLOS, written by the Cuban poet Jose Marti (1853-1895) in the United States during his years of exile and revolutionary struggle. This great political and literary figure of the nineteenth century has been one of the most influential men in all the Americas. A spiritual autobiography, SIMPLE VERSES captures in each poem an experience, a feeling or a moment that formed the poet and the man. The poet, the soldier, the troubadour, the legislator, the searcher for truth, the enraptured and the disenchanted lover, the defender of poetry and its transformer, the genius and the man - all alternate in a modulated and musical flow like life itself, which it embodies. The translations of Manuel Tellechea, a Cuban American living in Union City, New Jersey, have been published by the University of Pittsburgh, Freedom House, Transaction Publishers, and others.

Download or read book Eric written by Shaun Tan and published by Tundra Books. This book was released on 2020-10-20 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A beautifully surreal and gently humorous picture book about cultural differences, empathy and the power of perspective, from internationally acclaimed author-illustrator Shaun Tan. Eric is a foreign exchange student who comes to live with a typical suburban family. Although everyone is delighted with the arrangement, cultural misunderstandings ensue, beginning with Eric's insistence on sleeping in a pantry cupboard rather than a specially prepared guest room. The family takes Eric on a number of excursions, but they're never sure if he's having a good time, as he just doesn't say very much. He's mostly interested in small things he discovers on the ground. When Eric leaves the family suddenly, they're unsure if they've done something wrong. But Eric leaves them a surprise gift that they'll never forget.

Download or read book An Island Like You written by Judith Ortiz Cofer and published by Scholastic Inc.. This book was released on 2015-07-28 with total page 142 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Judith Ortiz Cofer's Pura Belpre award-winning collection of short stories about life in the barrio! Rita is exiled to Puerto Rico for a summer with her grandparents after her parents catch her with a boy. Luis sits atop a six-foot mountain of hubcaps in his father's junkyard, working off a sentence for breaking and entering. Sandra tries to reconcile her looks to the conventional Latino notion of beauty. And Arturo, different from his macho classmates, fantasizes about escaping his community. They are the teenagers of the barrio -- and this is their world.

Download or read book Terms of Survival written by Judith Ortiz Cofer and published by Arte Publico Press. This book was released on 1995-01-01 with total page 76 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Cofer confronts cultural legacy and a womanÍs desire ñto be released from ritualsî in her poetic dialectic of survival. Cultural icons, customs and rites of passage take root in an imagery that is tropical and piercing.

Download or read book Latino Boom written by John S. Christie and published by Pearson Longman. This book was released on 2006 with total page 664 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Latino Boom: An Anthology of U.S. Latino Literature combines an engaging and diverse selection of Latino/a authors with tools for students to read, think, and write critically about these works. The first anthology of Latino literature to offer teachers and students a wide array of scholarly and pedagogical resources for class discussion and analysis, this thematically organized collection of fiction, poetry, drama, and essay presents a rich spectrum of literary styles. Providing complete works of Latino/a literature vs excerpts written originally in English, the anthology juxtaposes well-known writers with emerging voices from diverse Latino communities, inviting students to examine Latino literature through a variety of lenses.

Download or read book Dear Abigail written by Diane Jacobs and published by Ballantine Books. This book was released on 2014-02-25 with total page 530 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For readers of the historical works of Robert K. Massie, David McCulough, and Alison Weir comes the first biography on the life of Abigail Adams and her sisters. “Never sisters loved each other better than we.”—Abigail Adams in a letter to her sister Mary, June 1776 Much has been written about the enduring marriage of President John Adams and his wife, Abigail. But few know of the equally strong bond Abigail shared with her sisters, Mary Cranch and Elizabeth Shaw Peabody, accomplished women in their own right. Now acclaimed biographer Diane Jacobs reveals their moving story, which unfolds against the stunning backdrop of America in its transformative colonial years. Abigail, Mary, and Elizabeth Smith grew up in Weymouth, Massachusetts, the close-knit daughters of a minister and his wife. When the sisters moved away from one another, they relied on near-constant letters—from what John Adams called their “elegant pen”—to buoy them through pregnancies, illnesses, grief, political upheaval, and, for Abigail, life in the White House. Infusing her writing with rich historical perspective and detail, Jacobs offers fascinating insight into these progressive women’s lives: oldest sister Mary, who became de facto mayor of her small village; youngest sister Betsy, an aspiring writer who, along with her husband, founded the second coeducational school in the United States; and middle child Abigail, who years before becoming First Lady ran the family farm while her husband served in the Continental Congress, first in Philadelphia, and was then sent to France and England, where she joined him at last. This engaging narrative traces the sisters’ lives from their childhood sibling rivalries to their eyewitness roles during the American Revolution and their adulthood as outspoken wives and mothers. They were women ahead of their time who believed in intellectual and educational equality between the sexes. Drawing from newly discovered correspondence, never-before-published diaries, and archival research, Dear Abigail is a fascinating front-row seat to history—and to the lives of three exceptional women who were influential during a time when our nation’s democracy was just taking hold. Advance praise for Dear Abigail “In a beautifully wrought narrative, Diane Jacobs has brought the high-spirited, hyperarticulate Smith sisters, and the early years of the American republic, to rich, luminous life. . . . A stunning, sensitive work of history.”—Stacy Schiff, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Cleopatra “Jacobs is a superb storyteller. In this sweeping narrative about family and friendship during the American Revolution, Abigail Adams emerges as one of the great political heroines of the eighteenth century. I fell in love with her all over again.”—Amanda Foreman, New York Times bestselling author of A World on Fire “Beauty, brains, and breeding—Elizabeth, Abigail, and Mary had them all. This absorbing history shows how these close-knit and well-educated daughters of colonial America become women of influence in the newly begotten United States. Jacobs’s feel for the period is confident; so is her appreciation of the nuances of character.”—Daniel Mark Epstein, author of The Lincolns: Portrait of a Marriage

Download or read book The Year of our Revolution written by Judith Ortiz Cofer and published by Arte Publico Press. This book was released on 1998-03-31 with total page 124 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A collection of poems, short stories, and essays address the theme of straddling two cultures as do the offspring of Hispanic parents living in the United States.

Download or read book Woman in Front of the Sun written by Judith Ortiz Cofer and published by University of Georgia Press. This book was released on 2000 with total page 148 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this collection of essays woven with poems and folklore, Judith Ortiz Cofer tells the story of how she became a poet and writer and explores her love of words, her discovery of the magic of language, and her struggle to carve out time to practice her art. A native of Puerto Rico, Cofer came to the mainland as a child. Torn between two cultures and two languages, she learned early the power of words and how to wield them. She discovered her love for the subtleties, sounds, and rhythms of the written word when a Roman Catholic nun and teacher bent on changing traditions for the better gave her books of high literature to read, some of which were forbidden by the church. Later, as an adult, demands from her family and her profession made it difficult for Cofer to find time to devote to her art, but her need and determination to express herself led to solutions that can help all artists challenged with the limits of time. Cofer recalls the family cuentos, or stories, that inspire her and shows how they speak to all artists, all women, all people. She encourages her readers to insist on the right to be themselves and to pursue their passions. A book that entertains, instructs, and enthralls, Woman in Front of the Sun will be invaluable to students of poetry and creative nonfiction and will be a staple in every creative writing classroom as well as an inspiration to all those who write.

Download or read book Dothead written by Amit Majmudar and published by Knopf. This book was released on 2018-03-20 with total page 121 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A captivating, no-holds-barred collection of new poems from an acclaimed poet and novelist with a fierce and original voice Dothead is an exploration of selfhood both intense and exhilarating. Within the first pages, Amit Majmudar asserts the claims of both the self and the other: the title poem shows us the place of an Indian American teenager in the bland surround of a mostly white peer group, partaking of imagery from the poet’s Hindu tradition; the very next poem is a fanciful autobiography, relying for its imagery on the religious tradition of Islam. From poems about the treatment at the airport of people who look like Majmudar (“my dark unshaven brothers / whose names overlap with the crazies and God fiends”) to a long, freewheeling abecedarian poem about Adam and Eve and the discovery of oral sex, Dothead is a profoundly satisfying cultural critique and a thrilling experiment in language. United across a wide range of tones and forms, the poems inhabit and explode multiple perspectives, finding beauty in every one.

Download or read book The Meaning of Consuelo written by Judith Ortiz Cofer and published by Beacon Press. This book was released on 2004-03-30 with total page 210 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Signe family is blessed with two daughters. Consuelo, the elder, is thought of as pensive and book-loving, the serious child-la niña seria-while Mili, her younger sister, is seen as vivacious, a ray of tropical sunshine. Two daughters: one dark, one light; one to offer comfort and consolation, the other to charm and delight. But, for all the joy both girls should bring, something is not right in this Puerto Rican family; a tragedia is developing, like a tumor, at its core. In this fierce, funny, and sometimes startling novel, we follow a young woman's quest to negotiate her own terms of survival within the confines of her culture and her family. magazine "Judith Ortiz Cofer has created a character who takes us by the hand on a journey of self-discovery. She reminds readers young and old never to forget our own responsibilities, and to enjoy life with all its joys and sorrows."--Bessy Reyna, MultiCultural Review

Download or read book Samurai Among Panthers written by Diane Carol Fujino and published by U of Minnesota Press. This book was released on 2012 with total page 476 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first biography of Asian American activist and Black Panther Party member Richard Aoki