Judith Ortiz Cofer
Judith Ortiz Cofer (born in 1952) is a Puerto Rican author. Her work spans a range of literary genres including poetry, short stories, autobiography, essays, and young-adult fiction.
Judith Ortiz Cofer was born in Hormigueros, Puerto Rico, on February 24, 1952. She moved to Paterson, New Jersey with her family in 1956. They often made back-and-forth trips between Paterson and Hormigueros. In 1967, her family moved to Augusta, Georgia, where she attended Butler High School. Ortiz Cofer received a B.A. in English from Augusta College, and later an M.A. in English from Florida Atlantic University.
Ortiz Cofer's work can largely be classified as creative nonfiction. Her narrative self is strongly influenced by oral storytelling, which was inspired by her grandmother, an able storyteller in the tradition of teaching through storytelling among Puerto Rican women. Ortiz Cofer's autobiographical work often focuses on her attempts at negotiating her life between two cultures, American and Puerto Rican, and how this process informs her sensibilities as a writer. Her work also explores such subjects as racism and sexism in American culture, machismo and female empowerment in Puerto Rican culture, and the challenges diasporic immigrants face in a new culture. Among Ortiz Cofer's more well known essays are "The Story of My Body" and "The Myth of the Latin Woman," both reprinted in The Latin Deli.
In 1984, Ortiz Cofer joined the faculty of the University of Georgia, where she is currently Franklin Professor of English and Creative Writing. In April 2010, Ortiz Cofer was inducted into the Georgia Writers Hall of Fame.
In 1994, she became the first Hispanic to win the O. Henry Prize for her story “The Latin Deli”. In 1996, Ortiz Cofer and illustrator Susan Guevara became the first recipients of the Pura Belpre Award for Hispanic children’s literature.
(from Wikipedia)
“Mourning suits us Spanish women.Tragedy turns us into Antigone - maybewe are bred for the part.”
“You are transformedinto one of the gypsy ancestorswe have never discussed.”
“The oldest woman in the village, Paciencia, predicts the weather from the flight of birds:Today it will rain toads, she says,squinting her face into a mystery of wrinklesas she reads the sky - tomorrow,it will be snakes.”
“In the wind that may travelas far as you have gone, I send this message: Out here,in a place you will not forget, a simple manhas been moved to curse the rising sun and to questionGod's unfinished work.”
“Without you, I am an empty placewhere spiders crawl and nothing takes root.”
“I was chaos on the first day,waiting for the Word.”
“The decade is over, time to begin forgivingold sins. Thirteen years since your deathon a Florida interstate - and againa dream of an old wrong.”
“Living with her taught me this:That silence is a thick and dark curtain,the kind that pulls down over a shop window;that love is the repercussion of a stonebouncing off that same window - and that painis something you can embrace, like a rag dollnobody will ask you to share.”
“ I have always known that you will visit my grave.I see myself as a small brown bird,perhaps a sparrow, watching youfrom a low branch as you prayin front of my name. I will hear yousound out my epitaph: Aqui descansauna mujer que quiso volar.You will recall telling methat you once dreamed in Spanish,and felt the wordslift you into flight. The sound of wingswill startle you when you say "volar,"and you will understand.”