Read Judith Ortiz Cofer and Langston Hughes’ poems and essays.
1. Although Ortiz Cofer’s background in Puerto Rican, what comparisons can you make between how she talks about her own cultural heritage (and her difficulty dealing with it) and your own?
2. Compare one of her poems to one of Langston Hughes’. Discuss how they are alike and different.
3. In “And Are You a Latina Writer” Cofer covers a lot of the same issues covered by Hughes in “The Negro and the Racial Mountain.” Discuss how their attitudes about culture and poetry differ.
Cofer’s essay, “The Myth of the Latin Woman” is available at this link
In the poem “Quinceañera” by Judith Ortiz Cofer, the poet explains the transformation from girlhood to womanhood from the perspective of a fifteen year old girl. In the poem “The Theme for English B” by Langston Hughes, the speaker talks about the African American struggle of forming an African American identity. Both poems illustrate a quest for identity because in the poem “Quinceañera” the speaker does not feel ready to become a woman and in “The Theme for English B” the speaker feels confused since society views him as being differentdue to the fact that he is an African American.Quinceañera means sweet fifteen in Spanish and on that special day a girl transforms from a child into a young woman. The first three lines of the poem give me the impression that the speaker of the poem is not ready to be a woman. She says “my dolls have been put away like dead children in a chest” (l 1-2). Dead children is a negative image. She is not ready to give up her “children”. The dolls represent the speaker’s childhood, and she is not ready to give up her childhood. Lines three through five indicate that she is still young and innocent. The reference tothe slip suggests she feels like playing dress up.
