Customer Reviews (5)

AMAZING PIECE OF POETRY
This is one of the most amazing collection's of poetry that have been written that deal with the Mexican-American experience and coming of age stories that also universal. If you are a lover of powerful and smart poetry, I recommend that you read this book back to back! Sonia V. González

where the fire comes from
A few years after the time I talk about here, I met Lorna, she was a high school student, realizing that she was more than "gifted" student, realizing she was connected to the fires and fiths of her people. I can remember LDC telling me how she strained to hear Corky Gonzales on the radio from Denver, and remebers names like Jorge Angel Guiterrez before they got bought out. That flame still burns in her poetry even if she is a big time poet and a department head at a gavacho university.Read these poems, read them outloud, listen and u will hear yourself
I can remember in 1970 flying from Cairo Illinois where white cops and racist Klansman had intimidated and shot and murdered and embattled Black workers and farmers into a state of terror to Crystal City Texas, where La Raza Unida, a Chicano political party based on working class and farming Chicanos, and white and black workers drawn to the same needs ran Zavalla County.
The Chicano militancy of the 60s and the 1970s road on the backs of the Black and Puerto Rican struggles, rode on the backs on the open ears it had for Che and Fidel, for what was happening then in Chile, and from the fights in Mexico.It exploded across Texas, across California, across New Mexico, and Colorado, even in places like Minneapolis and Chicago, long before the millions of Mexicans who have come since then arrived.
This volcano erupted then, not as some freak occurrence, but because a people oppressed, denied their nationality will rise and fight until they gain their justice.
.Yet, the volcano of another Chicano revolt is simmering. Like all volcanoes, like the volcanoes under Blacks, and Puerto Ricans, under workers in and out of unions, under women, the longer the volcano does not explode, the bigger the explosion, the more it can blow the top off the mountain and let the lava flow, hot and burning, sweeping away the oppression of capitalism, remaking the world, making us free. Que Viva La Raza

Blissfully twisted!
Emplumada is amongst the greatest pieces that i have endulged in.the piece is taintinizing with it's emotionally deep twists and extreme display of emotions.the uniquely devised reflections devour my every thought and spand of atttention....

One of the all time best in Chicano Literature
Cervantes's collection is spectacular and has risen above all Chicano poetry collectionsl.Along with Gary Soto's "Elements of San Joaquin," Cervantes gives of some of the best poetry Chicano Literature has to offer.

Beautiful poetry!
I had to reluctantly read this book of poetry for class and ended up loving it!The poems are beautiful!I definitely recommend it. ... Read more

Product Description
This collection confirms Cervantes' stature as a poet as she stretches the resources of language, imagery and the dialectics of love, hunger and aesthetics to express a penetrating feminist and human vision of her universe. "Cervantes is a poet with a clear, strong voice... Her work is refreshing and deceptively simple, reflecting love of language and music. She manages all this without sacrificing the humor, power, and complexity of themes she explores as a female, Latina-American, lover, intellectual, and writer..." (Jessica Hagedorn). ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

rare level of art and commitment and life
Lorna is rare in her craft, in her ability to transmit the reality of life, to situate that in a way that opens to those who do not immediately share her experiences, but at the same time place this where it belongs in her undiminished political commiment not just to the struggle of chicanas and indigenous people, but the general struggle the oppressed face around the world.Even if you are oblivious to politics, gender, Chicana power, you will find yourself seeing your own life more clearly in her words about hers.
A great book for teachers, particularly in community colleges and high schools.She writes about the real life working class students, particularly young women face, not about the normal white middle class alienation too many of our good poets seem to dwell on.This book belongs in every book shelf, in every home.

An extraordinary collection.
This book has been around for awhile, and I've yet to read a poetry book by a Chinana who surpasses this writer's scope in subject and language. With a strong voice and a keen ear for rhtyhm, this is a masterpiece in thegrowing canon of Mexican American letters. ... Read more

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Word count: 1109. ... Read more

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Term paper due tomorrow? Need to cram for a test? Or just looking for the best information about a favorite literary work?

Turn to "Poetry for Students" to get your research done in record time. Brought to you by Gale--the world's leading source of literary criticism and analysis--this e-doc contains: author biography; poem summary; poem text (if available); discussion of the work's themes, style, and historical context; a compendium of in-depth critical material; study questions; suggestions for further reading; and much more.

Why choose "Poetry for Students"? Because no other source offers so much in such a compact package. Trust the experts: Gale--and "Poetry for Students." ... Read more

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This digital document is an article from Journal of International Women's Studies, published by Bridgewater State College on May 1, 2009. The length of the article is 5450 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: Poetry as survival of and resistance to genocide in Lorna Dee Cervantes's Drive: The Last Quartet.(Book review)
Author: Edith Vasquez
Publication: Journal of International Women's Studies (Magazine/Journal)
Date: May 1, 2009
Publisher: Bridgewater State College
Volume: 10Issue: 4Page: 290(11)

Article Type: Book review

Distributed by Gale, a part of Cengage Learning ... Read more

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During the past two decades, literary issues like multiculturalism, gender, borders and border crossing, and the development of personal, cultural, and alternative identities have become increasingly important. The same years have seen the flourishing of writers from a number of ethnic minorities, including the Mexican-American women who are the subjects of these probing and insightful interviews by Karin Rosa Ikas.

The ten Chicana writers who are the subjects of this book reflect a remarkably diverse range of backgrounds and of personal and aesthetic programs. Novelist-playwright-actress Denise Chávez, for example, is the child of professional parents; she sees herself as a writer deeply rooted in her community and as a voice for the women of her community. Gloria Anzaldúa, on the other hand, who grew up around migrant workers, has been strongly influenced by feminist studies and uses her work to express her resistance to racism and the repression of women. Others, such as poets Lucha Corpi, Cherríe Moraga, and Lorna Dee Cervantes, find in their work the fullest expression of their personal being, as does novelist-short story writer Mary Helen Ponce. Actress Jamie Lujan uses her work to celebrate her individuality, while journalist-poet-novelist Demetria Martinez uses hers to address serious contemporary issues. To playwright-poet-fiction writer Estela Portillo-Trambley, writing is a journey of self-discovery, while poet Pat Mora sees it as the purest form of communication.

The interviews, which address such topics as personal background, education, sense of ethnic and gender identity, the origins and intention of published works, and general views on writing, culture, and art, reveal a rich multiplicity of Chicana voices and views. The writers come from Texas, New Mexico, and California; their connections to Mexico are as direct as having been born there and as tenuous as having descended from a family resident in New Mexico for over four centuries. Their backgrounds reflect a wide range of socio-economic realities, and their views on gender, sexuality, race, and writing are equally diverse. Yet to each of these writers, her identity as a Chicana and as a woman is critically important to her evolution and purpose as a writer.

Chicana Ways will be essential reading for anyone interested in multicultural and feminist literature and will serve as compelling documentation of the rich diversity and brilliance of contemporary Mexican American writing. ... Read more

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An independent crosscultural poetry journal, publishing realworld poetry rooted in the earth and rendered in blood: poems of significance, heart and craft. ... Read more

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This digital document is an article from MELUS, published by The Society for the Study of the Multi-Ethnics Literature of the United States on March 22, 2008. The length of the article is 7395 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: "Tat your black holes into paradise": Lorna Dee Cervantes and a poetics of loss.(Critical essay)
Author: Eliza Gibson Rodriguez
Publication: MELUS (Magazine/Journal)
Date: March 22, 2008
Publisher: The Society for the Study of the Multi-Ethnics Literature of the United States
Volume: 33Issue: 1Page: 139(17)

Article Type: Critical essay

Distributed by Gale, a part of Cengage Learning ... Read more

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Blood Lines: Myth, Indigenism, and Chicana/o Literature examines a broad array of texts that have contributed to the formation of an indigenous strand of Chicano cultural politics. In particular, this book exposes the ethnographic and poetic discourses that shaped the aesthetics and stylistics of Chicano nationalism and Chicana feminism. Contreras offers original perspectives on writers ranging from Alurista and Gloria Anzaldúa to Lorna Dee Cervantes and Alma Luz Villanueva, effectively marking the invocation of a Chicano indigeneity whose foundations and formulations can be linked to U.S. and British modernist writing. By highlighting intertextualities such as those between Anzaldúa and D. H. Lawrence, Contreras critiques the resilience of primitivism in the Mexican borderlands. She questions established cultural perspectives on "the native," which paradoxically challenge and reaffirm racialized representations of Indians in the Americas. In doing so, Blood Lines brings a new understanding to the contradictory and richly textured literary relationship that links the projects of European modernism and Anglo-American authors, on the one hand, and the imaginary of the post-revolutionary Mexican state and Chicano/a writers, on the other hand. ... Read more