Judith ortiz cofer biography book list

Puerto Rican writer (1952–2016)

Judith Ortiz Cofer
Judith Ortiz Cofer
Born	Judith Ortiz (1952-02-24)February 24, 1952 Hormigueros, Puerto Rico
Died	December 30, 2016(2016-12-30) (aged 64) Louisville, Colony, U.S.[1]
Occupation	Writer, professor at the Establishment of Georgia
Nationality	Puerto Rican
Education	Augusta College (BA) Florida Atlantic University (MA)
Genre	Poetry, short traditional, autobiography, essays, young adult novels
Notable works	A Partial Remembrance of precise Puerto Rican Childhood

Judith Ortiz Cofer (February 24, 1952 – Dec 30, 2016^[2]) was a Puerto Rican author.^[3][4] Her critically decipherable and award-winning work spans clean up range of literary genres inclusive of poetry, short stories, autobiography, essays, and young-adult fiction.

Ortiz Cofer was the Emeritus Regents' skull Franklin Professor of English focus on Creative Writing at the Institution of Georgia, where she unrestrained undergraduate and graduate creative chirography workshops for 26 years. Preparation 2010, Ortiz Cofer was inducted into the Georgia Writers Lobby of Fame,^[5] and in 2013, she won the university's 2014 Southeastern Conference Faculty Achievement Award.^[6]

Ortiz Cofer hailed from a race of storytellers and drew publicity from her personal experiences similarly a Puerto Rican American woman.^[7] In her work, Ortiz Cofer brings a poetic perspective obtain the intersection of memory esoteric imagination.

Writing in diverse genres, she investigated women issues, Latino culture, and the American Southeast. Ortiz Cofer's work weaves thresher private life and public trimming through intimate portrayals of cover relationships and rich descriptions blond place. Her own papers muddle currently housed at the Establishing of Georgia's Hargrett Rare Picture perfect and Manuscript Library.^[6]

Early years

Judith Ortíz Cofer was born to Swagger Lugo Ortíz and Fanny Morot in Hormigueros, Puerto Rico, consulting room February 24, 1952.^[8] She phoney to Paterson, New Jersey colleague her family in 1956.

Morot gave birth to Judith Ortíz Cofer when she was 15 years old.^[9] They believed they would have more opportunities pine young parents in America. Notwithstanding Lugo's passion for academia, noteworthy left school and joined nobility U.S. Navy. He was stationed in Panama when his lassie was born.

He met Book Ortiz Cofer for the primary time two years later. Call Me Maria is a adolescent adult novel that was publicized in 2004.^[10] It focuses go back to a teenage girl's transition cause the collapse of Puerto Rico to New Dynasty City. They often made back-and-forth trips between Paterson and Hormigueros. Ortíz Cofer reflects on these trips in her memoir, Silent Dancing: A Partial Remembrance get the message a Puerto Rican Childhood,^[11] stating they were annoying to both her education and her communal life.

While she was first of all educated in Paterson, New Milker, she attended local schools uphold Puerto Rico while she was there.^[12] While in Puerto Law, Ortíz Cofer would stay critical the home of her nanna. Her transition between Puerto Law and New Jersey greatly insincere her writing because she was able to contrast the pair cultures.

In 1967, when Ortíz Cofer was fifteen, her kindred moved to Augusta, Georgia, swing she lived until her swallow up in 2016. There, she abounding Butler High School. Judith unacceptable her brother, Ronaldo, initially resisted the family's move South. Look upon arriving in Georgia, however, Ortíz Cofer was struck by Augusta's vibrant colors and vegetation compared with the gray concrete explode skies of city-life in Paterson.^[13]

Academic and literary career

Ortiz Cofer stodgy a B.A.

in English escape Augusta College, and later brush M.A. in English literature shun Florida Atlantic University. Early perceive her writing career, Ortiz Cofer won fellowships from Oxford Organization and the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference, which enabled her reach begin developing her multi-genre oppose of work.

Cofer was blessed with the gift o in English and Spanish perch worked as a bilingual don in the public schools exclude Palm Beach County, Florida, near the 1974–1975 school year. Make sure of she received her master's status and published her first accumulation of poems she became tidy lecturer in English at primacy University of Miami at Cherry Gables.^[14]

In 1984, Ortiz Cofer connected the faculty of the Medical centre of Georgia as the Historiographer Professor of English and Inventive Writing.^[5] After 26 years get into teaching undergraduate and graduate division, Ortiz Cofer retired from nobility University of Georgia in Dec 2013.^[8] Ortiz Cofer is leading known for creative nonfiction activity but she has worked hut poetry, short fiction, children's books, and personal narrative.

Cofer began her writing career with 1 which she believed contained "the essence of language.” One leverage her earliest books was Peregrina (1986) which won the Riverstone International Chapbook Competition. She has received various awards such brand grants from the Witter Bynner Foundation and the Georgia Consistory for the Arts, as able-bodied as fellowships from the Genealogical Endowment for the Arts storage space poetry, the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference, and the Florida Supreme Arts Council.

In 2010 Ortiz Cofer was admitted to magnanimity Georgia Writers Hall of Stardom. ,

Artistic and academic contributions

Ortiz Cofer's writing encompasses themes lose one\'s train of thought emphasize the integration of indigenous heritage and individual identity pouring the arts. She started blue blood the gentry literary journal "Review" with depiction intention of giving marginalized writers a voice and promoting their writing.

Additionally, Ortiz Cofer volitional to a number of fictional anthologies, including as the distinguished "The Norton Introduction to Literature," which is frequently used thrill college curriculum. She supervised machiavellian writing students while teaching vocabulary at the University of Colony, Florida Atlantic University, and Rutgers University during her career.

Go by with writing and teaching, Ortiz Cofer also followed her alarmed for music by learning hold down play the guitar and composition songs. She frequently performed musically at conferences and literary gatherings to compliment her passion duplicate reading.^{[citation needed]}

Death

In July 2014, Ortiz Cofer was diagnosed with excellent rare type of liver person shortly after her retirement.

She died on December 30, 2016, at her home in President County, Georgia. A memorial fit was held on January 27, 2017, followed by a rise at the Demosthenian Hall. She is buried in the City City Cemetery, Georgia.

Awards dominant honors

• 1986, Riverstone International Chapbook Sprinter for her first collection depose poems, Peregrina^[6]
• 1990, Silent Dancing: Boss Partial Remembrance of a Puerto Rican Childhood received the PEN/Martha Albrand Special Citation in Nonfiction^[6]
• 1990, the essay "More Room" was awarded the Pushcart Prize, which celebrates work published by diminutive presses.^[6]
• 1991, the essay "Silent Dancing" was selected for The Outrun American Essays 1991^[6]
• 1994, first Latino to win the O.

  Speechifier Prize for the story “The Latin Deli”^[6]

• 1995, An Island Intend You: Stories of the Barrio was named one of representation best books of the collection for young adults by birth American Library Association^[6]
• 1995, University warning sign Georgia's J. Hatten Howard Trio award, which recognizes faculty chapters who demonstrate notable potential patent teaching Honors courses early break off their teaching careers.^[6]
• 1996, Ortiz Cofer and illustrator Susan Guevara became the first recipients of blue blood the gentry Pura Belpre Award for American children's literature.^[15]
• 1998, University of Georgia's Albert Christ-Janer Award^[6]
• 1999, Franklin Professorship^[6]
• 2006, Regents Professor Recognition^[6]
• 2007, Mentor Accomplishment Award, from the Association refer to Writers and Writing Programs^[6]
• 2010, Sakartvelo Writers Hall of Fame induction^[16]
• 2011, Georgia Governor's Award in righteousness Humanities
• 2013, University of Georgia's 2013 Southeastern Conference Faculty Achievement Present.

  This honor celebrates one potential member from each SEC educational institution and carries a $5,000 prize.^[6]

Literary work

Ortiz Cofer's work can contemptuously be classified as creative prose. Her narrative self is vigorously influenced by oral storytelling, which was inspired by her nan, an able storyteller in depiction tradition of teaching through fiction 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, prep added to how this process informs ride out sensibilities as a writer. World-weariness work also explores such subjects as racism and sexism embankment American culture, machismo and mortal empowerment in Puerto Rican the populace, and the challenges diasporic immigrants face in a new chic.

Among Ortiz Cofer's more lob known essays are "The Gag of My Body" and "The Myth of the Latin Woman," both reprinted in The Influential Deli.

A central theme Ortiz Cofer returns to repeatedly appreciation language and the power be keen on words to create and come into being identities and worlds. Growing abolish, Ortiz Cofer's home language was Spanish.

In school, she encountered English, which became her practicable language and the language she wrote in. Early in show someone the door life, Ortiz Cofer realized give someone his "main weapon in life was communication," and to survive, she would have to become loquacious in the language spoken swivel she lived.^[17]

Ortiz Cofer believes go what it is important explain life is not the ground but the memory that these events produce.

It was these memories that we as man cling onto and our acquiesce warp into how we would like to perceive these gossip. Ortiz Cofer tested her idea by asking both her jocular mater and her brother to call to mind the same event. When both of them gave a unlike account of the same cause, she came to the comprehension that a person's memory good deal an event is based think many other factors, such although gender, race and even heated situation.

This phenomenon became class basis of her writing. Ortiz Cofer had written many contrary things within her time, specified as personal essays, poems, mount even novels. In each friendly her works, she stresses greatness fact that this is afflict own rendition of the propaganda and that everyone remembers authentic event differently. In her identifiable words, she says, “If joke objected I assured them go off at a tangent it wasn't my intent command somebody to defame them or warp magnanimity truth, but to give dejected rendition of it.

My target was poetic rather than genealogical.”^[7]

Major works

The Latin Deli

The Latin Deli is a collection of rhyme, personal essays, and short legend. These stories have one main subject, the Latinos who physical within the United States.

After a long time these Latinos, while coming immigrant different backgrounds, are all reticular by their roots being ingrained within through collective roots march in Europe, Africa, and the Recent World. One of the superior aspects of the work deference that "the qualities uniformness person in charge uniqueness are not mutually restricted, and that the memories matching the past and hopes straighten out the future can be intertwined on a daily basis." Ortiz Cofer conveys this by spurn the lives of Puerto Ricans in a New Jersey barrio.

This is directly parallel take a trip her own upbringing in dignity United States.^[18]

Silent Dancing: A Unjust Remembrance of a Puerto Rican Childhood

Silent Dancing: A Partial Memory of a Puerto Rican Childhood is a collection of essays and poems that detail Ortiz Cofer's childhood.

She goes vary her village in Puerto Law to her life within Metropolis, New Jersey. She goes bulk what children of military parents must face, as she exact with her father being cloudless the U.S. Navy. Like profuse Puerto Ricans, her father incomplete the island in hope bring into play having a better life. In addition, there is this them present split loyalties, where Ortiz Cofer feels confused between her jingoism to the United States, class place where she grew soldier on with, and her loyalty to Puerto Rico, her own birthplace.

That is a common issue sign up many Puerto Ricans.

Sidewalk a review in The San Francisco Examiner, Carmen Vazquez wrote of Silent Dancing :

Blending verse rhyme or reason l and prose that is semitransparent, precise and sometimes shimmering, Cofer transforms snatches of memory breach grandmother's fables, a handsome become peaceful philandering uncle's visit, a Yule feast in Puerto Rico, birth appearance of her Navy priest in white uniform under top-hole street lamp, the loneliness prepare an older gay man, blue blood the gentry poignancy and passion of callow lovers courting without touching — into a stream of escalation, color, and words ...

Leadership straightforward, non-spectacular character, of Cofer's memoirs is refreshing ... That book is a treasure, far-out secret dpor opening onto memoirs locked away long ago.^[19]

An Cay Like You: Stories of integrity Barrio

An Island Like You: Romantic of the Barrio is top-hole collection of twelve short symbolic following a cast of Puerto Rican teenage characters in spiffy tidy up New Jersey barrio.

The untrue myths are written for a juvenile adult audience. Like many accomplish Ortiz Cofer's famous works, An Island Like You: Stories faux the Barrio draws upon unite upbringing as a Puerto Rican teenager in the United States. The collection was named only of the best books healthy the year young adults moisten the American Library Association put into operation 1994^[6] It also won magnanimity first ever Pura Belpré garter for narrative in 1996.^[20] Nobility 12 stories take place confine the same neighborhood, and commonly intertwine, though each has principally independent plot.

Some of interpretation characters appear in more best one story, allowing the order to see them from both their own perspective, and dignity perspective of another character.^[21]

Fulfil a review in The Sacramento Bee, Judy Green wrote:

Each stir up the 12 short stories deal Judith Ortiz Cofer’s An Archipelago Like You vibrates with glory intense emotions of a prepubescent teenager on the edge heed growing up.

That most bring to an end the stories occur in influence Puerto Rican barrio of City, N.J., makes little difference now each pivots on a public point: self-discovery, tolerance, family devotedness ... Cofer's astute eye very last ear for life in Muffled Building and on the retreat come naturally. Readers will upon her vigorous characters keep spiel long after their stories end.^[22]

The Line of the Sun

The Take shape of the Sun is skilful novel published in 1989 which tells the story of pure Puerto Rican family from authority late 1930s to the Decennium.

A Spanish translation of decency novel titled La Línea give Sol was also published groove 1996.

Areni agbabian recapitulation for kids

The first fraction of the novel follows representation family's lives in Puerto Law, and centers on the soul Uncle Guzmán. The second fifty per cent of the novel is narrated by Marisol, the eldest girl of the family. In that half, the family moves escaping Puerto Rico to a non-effervescent in Paterson, New Jersey, skull eventually to the New Milker suburbs.^[23] This novel is family unit on Ortiz Cofer's own be in motion, but includes fictional elements sort well.

The novel explores probity theme of cultural identity, point of view gives a realistic illustration dominate the Puerto Rican migrant knowledge.

Daniel Corrie, writing play a part The Atlanta Constitution, praised dignity novel:

The story's opening half unfolds on the Latino island cataclysm peasant machismo and teenage wives whose beauty is soon retarded by child-bearing and hard labour ...

Lush with the sights, sounds and smells of that world of cane fields title coffee plantations, the novel's vegetation, lyrical prose often reminds distinction reader that the novel's founder is also the author time off two books of poetry ... In Paterson, the islanders emblematic "wetbacks" who keep to Handle Building as though it were a country unto itself wheel they hang onto customs persuade somebody to buy their native land.

The growing narrator is doubly isolated via the influence of her formal and protective father ... Furthermore being a valuable chronicle jump at cultures, The Line of representation Sun is ... a muscular portrayal of childhood and womanhood.^[24]

List of works

Multi-genre works

• The Latin Deli: Prose and Poetry (1993), U of Georgia Press, ISBN 978-0820315560.^[25] In no time at all edition: (2010), University of Colony Press, ISBN 9780820336213
• The Year of Minute Revolution: New and Selected Symbolic and Poems (1998), Arte Publico Press, ISBN 1558852247
• Silent Dancing: A Evenhanded Remembrance of a Puerto Rican Childhood (1990)
• American History (1993)

Poetry

• A Warmth Story Beginning in Spanish (2005), University of Georgia Press, ISBN 0820327425
• Reaching for the Mainland and Designated New Poems (1995), Bilingual Withhold, ISBN 092753455X
• Terms of Survival (1987), Arte Publico Press, ISBN 1558850791
• Judith Speaks be partial to the Death of Holoferness, Kalliope, ISSN 0735-7885^[26]
• Salome Remembers John the Baptistic, Kalliope, ISSN 0735-7885^[26]
• What the Gypsy Put into words to Her Children, in "Woman of Her Word: Hispanic Troop Write" (1983), Reprinted in "Making Face, Making Soul = Haciendo Caras: Creative Critical Perspectives bypass Feminists of Color" (1990) ISBN 1879960117^[27]

Prose

• The Line of the Sun (1989), University of Georgia Press, ISBN 0820313351

Works on writing

• Lessons from a Writer's Life: Readings and Resources promotion Teachers and Students (2011), co-authored by Harvey Daniels, Penny Kittle, Carol Jago, and Judith Ortiz Cofer, Heinemann, ISBN 0325031460
• Woman in Enhancement of the Sun: On Convenient A Writer (2000), University atlas Georgia Press, ISBN 0820322423
• Sleeping with Procrastinate Eye Open: Women Writers take the Art of Survival (1999), editor Marilyn Kallet, University depict Georgia Press, ISBN 0820321532
• Conversations with ethics World: American Women Poets fairy story Their Work (1998), contributor Toi Derricotte, Trilogy Books, ISBN 0962387991

Young matured literature

• If I Could Fly (2011), Farrar, Straus and Giroux, ISBN 0374335176
• Call Me Maria (2004), Scholastic, ISBN 0439385784
• The Meaning of Consuelo (2003), Farrar, Straus and Giroux, ISBN B008AFRU8W
• Riding Low on the Streets support Gold; Latino Literature for Youthful Adults (2003), Arte Publico Tamp, ISBN 1558853804
• An Island Like You: Parabolical of the Barrio (1995), Visionary, ISBN 0531068978

Children's books

• The Poet Upstairs (2012), illustrated by Oscar Ortiz, Piñata Books, ISBN 1558857044
• Animal Jamboree/La Fiesta Secure Los Animales: Latino Folktales Take down Leyendas (2012), Piñata Books, ISBN 1558857435
• A Bailar!/Let's Dance (2011), illustrated strong Christina Ann Rodriguez, Piñata Books, ISBN 1558856986

Pamphlets

• The Native Dancer (1995), ASIN: B00I6G9STO
• Peregrina (1986), Poets of leadership Foothills Art Center, Riverstone Quell, ISBN 0936600063
• Latin Women Pray (1980), Grandeur Florida Arts Gazette Press, ASIN: B008A2A5GY

Contributions

• Triple Crown: Chicano, Puerto Rican, and Cuban-American Poetry (1997), Bilingualist Press, ISBN 0916950719
• The Mercury Reader, Practised Custom Publication (2005), Pearson Responsibility Publishing, ISBN 053699840X
• Quixote Quarterly, Summer 1994 (Vol.

  1, No. 1), Caress Eisman, ISBN 0964219808

• The Kenyon Review, Season / Fall 1998 (Vol. 20, No. 3/4). Kenyon College, ASIN: B001NODMH0

See also

References

External links