Surname 1

Student’s Name

Professor’s Name

Course

Date

Topic Judith Ortiz and her poem Quinceanera

Part 1: Life, History, and Work

Judith Ortiz is one of the exemplary literary authors who have sparked interest in many

through her work. She was born on February 24th, 1952, and died on December 29th, 2016, at 64

years. She hailed from Puerto Rico and had a wide range of literary works published in her life,

starting with poems, autobiographies, short narratives, essays, and literary genres of fiction.

Judith was born on February 24, 1952, in Hormigueros in Puerto Rico to Jesus Lugo Ortíz and

Fanny Morot. Later Ortiz migrated with her family to Paterson, New Jersey, in 1956. Judith

Ortíz was born when her mother, Morot, was 15 years old, which made her mother think that

young mothers in the United States would have more prospects. His father left school and

entered the United States, despite his love for education. At the time of her birth, his father was

stationed in Panama and met for the first time two years later. Her family had influenced her

writing by moving from Puerto Rico to New Jersey. The young novel Name Me Maria released

in 2004, rated for adults, concentrates on relocating a teenage girl from Puerto Rico to New

York. They traveled between Paterson and Hormigueros, mostly back-and-forth. This migration

affected her work enormously as she interacted with diverse cultures and the environment. This

section will focus on her education and also the work before she passed away.
 2

Judith Ortiz has taught for 26 years as a bachelor and postgraduate creative writing

workshop for Ortiz Cofer and Franklin, Professor of English and Creative Writing of the

University of Georgien. In 2010, Ortiz Cofer was named to the Georgia Writers Hall of Fame,

receiving the Southeastern Conference Faculty Achievement Award of the University for its

2014 Universidad 2013 (Cofer et al., pp. 93-108). Her works are poetically based on his

experience as a Puerto Rican American woman. Ortiz Cofer is the author of a family of stories

narrations and draws heavily from her background as a Puerto Rican American female

experience. She has researched women's problems, Latino culture, and Latin America, therefore,

writing in various genres. Intimate families' images and vivid descriptions of locations connect

private and public spaces in Ortiz Cofer's work together. Besides, she has her papers at the

Hargrett Rare Book and Manuscript Library of the University of Georgia.

Ortiz Cofer earned a BA in English from Augusta College and then M.A. in

literature Later from Florida Atlantic University. Ortiz Cofer received baccalaureates from the

University of Oxford and the Conference of Writers on Bread Loaf at the beginning of his

publishing, enabling her to begin to work multi-gender. Cofer was indeed a versatile English and

Spanish professor at Palm Beach County, Florida, public schools in 1974-1975, serving as a

bilingual tutor. After her master's degree and her first poetry collection, Cofer became an English

lecturer at Coral Gables University in Miami. Ortiz Cofer was named Professor of English and

Creative Writing in 1984 in the Faculty of Georgia University. Ortiz resigned from the

University of Georgia in December 2013 after 26 years of lecturing undergraduate and graduate

scholars. Ortiz Cofer was popularly known for her imaginative non-fiction narratives but has also

worked in poetry, short fiction, books for children, and personal storytelling. She has won

numerous awards in literature. For example, in one of her earliest novels, Peregrina (1986) won
 3

the Riverstone International Chapbook Competition; she received many prizes, including funds

from the Witter Bynner Foundation and the Georgia Council for Arts.

Part 2: Poem Analysis of Quinceanera

Quinceanera by Judith Ortiz Coffer is a very intriguing literary work. Judith portrays an

image of a young woman currently experiencing the transition from child to adult. It is believed

that girls in most Latin American states are inevitably women when they reach 15 years as per

the celebrations held by the Latino societies known as Quinceanera. Accordingly, individual acts

of childhood begin to behave and live in the same way. That is what Judith demonstrates in the

poem as Kennedy et al (2013). There are considerable shifts in several lines of the poem that the

subject goes through. In the first instance, the character leaving playing with her dolls shows

how the girl shifts. She's getting rid of them. "I put my dolls in a chest like dead kids I'll carry

with me when I marry (1-3)." Latin Community culture takes the central plot in the poem as the

author heavily borrows elements of the culture. As a poet, Judith employs skills that affirm her

language posterity and offering firsthand information of life accounts. This section will focus on

how the poet uses poetic devices to support her theme in Quinceanera.

The key theme of this particular poem is skilled reiterated by Cofer utilizing literary

elements. Further, the poet employs vivid description skills to create imagery in the reader's

mind of the ceremonial progress in the Latino community. The first literary device remarkably

used in the poem is the similes. For instance, she compares the act of removing one's childhood

dolls to a kind of burial. This simile reinforces the untold doubts of the narrator regarding this

new period of his life. When she thinks about her childhood loss, she recalled that womanhood

had been forced against her with little warning (Cofer). Again this resemblance enhances the age

of the girl.
 4

“I reach under my skirt to feel

a satin slip bought for this day. It is soft

as the inside of my thighs. My hair

has been nailed back with my mother’s

black hairpins to my skull. Her hands

stretched my eyes open…”

The first person's speech, 'I or My' is used by the speaker in the poem. The voice of the

speaker and the use of words reveal their identity as a woman. This has been seen in the sentence

"I feel a satin slip under my skirt" (Cofer 116). The Quinceanera has a particular rite in which the

father and the daughter perform a traditional Waltz dance. It also includes toasting wine and a

girl's bouquet to a bunch of boys to decide who has the honor of dancing with a young lady.

While it's usually long and expensive to celebrate, it represents a crucial time in many families.

To the speaker of the poem, the ceremony only contributed to heightening her anxiety, which can

be seen from the line "waiting for each hour to release me." She is nervous and cannot wait for

the celebration to end. She dreads being a woman and having to do most of the things that were

done for her.

The other fascinating element in raising thematic concern is the choice of words or

diction. Judith Cofer, in Quinceañera poem, discusses the challenges of becoming a woman. She

is resistant to the alterations accompanying womanhood in a culture that finds a woman inferior

to a male. She says that is one reason she wrote the poem when she turned fifteen, based on her

own experiences, and it is evident by the use of first-person throughout the poem. She would

show her woe more in rows 11 to 16 if she was viewed as the woman who had to care for her

laundry. "...as if the fluids of my body were poisonous as a small blood trickle, I think it was
 5

disgraceful that it traveled from my heart into the world (12-15)." Again, during the night, she

can't notice her growth, but her body can shift. Deep down, she longs for these emotions and

adjustments to go forever. This shows that the writer explicitly narrates her own experience with

Latino culture, which further gets supplemented by her origin and migration. In lines eleven and

sixteen, the poet affirms how she felt sad for being regarded as a female who had to keep her

hygiene levels, primarily because of the menstrual cycle. The author showed disgust and a

feeling of shame when she experienced her first cycle. Besides, she lacks to notice her growth at

night though she feels there are changes in her body. Inside her, she thinks that she is insecure

and tied to feelings that restrain life.

“I am to wash my own clothes

and sheets from this day on, as if

the fluids of my body were poison, as ifthe little trickle of blood, I believe

travels from my heart to the world were

shameful… At night I hear myself growing and wake

to find my hands drifting of their own will

to soothe skin stretched tightover my bones."

In summary, the author shows expertise in how she handles the topic of women bias and

culture through first-hand information. The poem says that it is not always the best day for a

woman to be on the threshold for adulthood. The fifteen-year-old was generally presented as

suitable for society marriage and was educated in families' duties and demands. Of course, the

tradition is redundant and loses value and instead is celebrated as a glamorous birthday party. A

girl is supposed to resolve various things as she gets old, including discarding her toys. Judith

also describes the biological and sociological changes that arise during this period in a girl's
 6

body. The main aim is to open society's eyes to see the pains of the day during the festivities of

Quinceanera with the aid of literature.

 7

Works Cited:

Cofer, Judith Ortiz. Silent dancing: A partial remembrance of a Puerto Rican childhood. Arte

Público Press, 1991.

Cofer, Judith O. "Quinceañera by Judith Ortiz Cofer." Poetry Foundation,

www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/57812/quincenanera.

Cofer, Judith Ortiz, and Margaret Crumpton. "An Interview with Judith Ortiz

Cofer." Meridians 3.2 (2003): 93-109.

Kennedy, X. J., and Dana Gioia. Literature: An introduction to fiction, poetry, drama, and

writing. Ed. Dan Stone. Pearson, 2013.