by Lorraine M. López & Molly Crumpton Winter, editors

Rituals of Movement in the Writing of Judith Ortiz Cofer is the first book-length collection of scholarship on her writing and establishes Ortiz Cofer as an important contemporary American author. Ten analytical essays and four interviews explore the complexity and originality of her work and her central themes of Puerto Rican identity, cross-cultural experience, and the female perspective in a shifting multicultural world.

This collection discusses almost all of Ortiz Cofer’s writing, including her most popular and influential works such as Silent Dancing, The Latin Deli, and A Love Song Written in Spanish. This book is organized into sections that highlight her achievements in prose, poetry, and the mixed-genre writing that is a major innovative contribution to American letters.

The contributors include award-winning poets, fiction writers, and scholars of American Literature, Latino/a Studies and Women’s Studies, which makes this collection a unique and much-needed addition to the scholarship of multicultural, Hispanic, Caribbean, Puerto Rican, and women’s literature.

Ortiz Cofer has been illuminating the Puerto Rican community’s journeys back and forth between the Caribbean island and the U.S., between rural landscapes and urban landscapes, and between Spanish and English. ─ Rigoberto Gonzalez

308 pp., softcover, 6 x 9 inches.

Cat. #: CSP8629
ISBN #: 9781584328622