Judith Ortiz Cofer is an award-winning author known for her stories about coming-of-age experiences in the barrio and her writings about the cultural conflicts of immigrants. She is the author of many distinguished titles for young adults such as Call Me Maria, The Meaning of Conseulo, Silent Dancing: A Partial Remembrance of a Puerto Rican Childhood, and The Line in the Sun. She lives in Georgia where she is the Regents’ and Franklin Professor of English and Creative Writing at the University of Georgia.
Notes for my Daughter on the Morning of a New Year
Mira, mira, our Spanish-speaking kinare always saying, “Look and look again.” It amuses us,this insistence on seeing, even when they mean listen.Could it be that they keep the world less […]
Poetry
Summer 1998
Notes for My Daughter on the Morning of a New Year
Mira, mira, our Spanish-speaking kinare always saying, “Look and look again.” It amuses us,this insistence on seeing, even when they mean listen.Could it be that they keep the world less […]
Fiction
Autumn 1992
The Witch’s Husband
My grandfather has misplaced his words again. He is trying to find my name in the kaleidoscope of images that his mind has become. His face brightens like a child’s […]
Interview
Autumn 1992
Puerto Rican Literature in Georgia? An Interview with Judith Ortiz Cofer
Judith Ortiz Cofer is among the increasing number of Hispanic authors resident in the United States who propose to document ethnic integration into American society. Like the work of Chicanos, […]
Fiction
Autumn 1992
Not for Sale
El Arabe was what the Puerto Rican women called him. He sold them beautiful things from his exotic homeland in the afternoons, at that hour when the day’s work is […]
Poetry
Autumn 1991
The Lesson of the Tongue
1966 It is the year of rainstorms in the afternoon, and our neighbor’s son has been sent homefrom the jungle, still wearing camouflage,and wounded in some way we cannot see. […]
Poetry
Autumn 1991
A Legion of Dark Angels
1959 They came down from the Sierra Maestra, from its dizzying heights, wearingthe green of the forest, shouting prophecy:those dusty dominions, those archangelsin full armor, nearly floating through the ecstatic […]
Poetry
Autumn 1991
An Early Mystery
1957 Six years old, I’m lingering over the candy counter.On the other side of the bodega my mother is interrogating the grocerabout the freshness of the produce: the breadfruit, the […]
Poetry
Summer 1990
They Never Grew Old
I am speaking of that hollow-eyed race of bone-embraced tubercular women and men, the last of whom I caught a glimpse of in the final days of my childhood. Every […]
Poetry
Autumn 1988
From Penelope’s Journal: Learning to Walk Alone
Today I followed my servant, Hestia, down the dusty path that leads away from the sea. Trudging towards the barren hills that separate my house from her world, her stiff […]
Poetry
Autumn 1988
From Penelope’s Journal: The Drowned Sailor
When I first saw you break through the wine-dark waters, your body blocked the setting sun, an aureole of light transforming you into a god. The tide rocked you, spread […]