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Judith Ortiz and Her Poem Quinceanera - Edited
Judith Ortiz and Her Poem Quinceanera - Edited
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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.
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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
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
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the Riverstone International Chapbook Competition; she received many prizes, including funds
from the Witter Bynner Foundation and the Georgia Council for Arts.
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.
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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
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
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
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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
the fluids of my body were poison, as ifthe little trickle of blood, I believe
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
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body. The main aim is to open society's eyes to see the pains of the day during the festivities of
Works Cited:
Cofer, Judith Ortiz. Silent dancing: A partial remembrance of a Puerto Rican childhood. Arte
www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/57812/quincenanera.
Cofer, Judith Ortiz, and Margaret Crumpton. "An Interview with Judith Ortiz
Kennedy, X. J., and Dana Gioia. Literature: An introduction to fiction, poetry, drama, and