Contemporary Chicana Poetry

by Sanchez, Marta E.

• ISBN13: 9780520058880
• ISBN10: 0520058887
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1986-10-01
• Publisher: Univ of California Pr on Demand

Summary

In this first book-length study of the works of Chicano women writers, Marta Ester Sanchez introduces the reader to a group of Chicanas who in the 1970s began to reexamine and reevaluate their gender and cultural identity through poetic language. The term 'Chicana' refers here to women of Mexican heritage who live and write in the United States. The works of four contemporary Chicana poets---Alma Villanueva, Lorna Dee Cervantes, Lucha Corpi, and Bernice Zamora---are the focus of this volume.

Table of Contents

Preface	p. ix
Setting the Context: Gender, Ethnicity, and Silence in Contemporary Chicana Poetry	p. 1
The Birthing of the Poetic "I" in Alma Villanueva's Mother, May I?: The Search for a Female Identity	p. 24
The Chicana as Scribe: Harmonizing Gender and Culture in Lorna Dee Cervantes' "Beneath the Shadow of the Freeway"	p. 85
Prohibition and Sexuality in Lucha Corpi's Palabras de Mediodia / Noon Words	p. 139
The Dramatization of a Shifting Poetic Consciousness: Bernice Zamora's Restless Serpents	p. 214
Afterword	p. 269
Appendixes	p. 277
Poems from Bloodroot	p. 277
Poems from Alma Villanueva's Irvine Collection	p. 297
Mother, May I?	p. 303
Notes	p. 337
Bibliography	p. 361
Index	p. 367
Table of Contents provided by Syndetics. All Rights Reserved.