Emplumada

by Lorna Dee Cervantes

Book Overview

Emplumada is Lorna Dee Cervantes's first book, a collection of poems remarkable for their surface clarity, precision of image, and emotional urgency. Rooted in her Chicana heritage, these poems illuminate the American experience of the last quarter century and, at a time when much of what is merely fashionable in American poetry is recondite and exclusive, Cervantes has the ability to speak to and for a large audience.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0822953277
• ISBN13: 9780822953272
• Release Date: December 1981
• Publisher: University of Pittsburgh Press
• Length: 80 Pages
• Weight: 0.30 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.2" x 5.5" x 8.0"

Customer Reviews

where the fire comes from

A few years after the time I talk about here, I met Lorna, she was a high school student, realizing that she was more than "gifted" student, realizing she was connected to the fires and fiths of her people. I can remember LDC telling me how she strained to hear Corky Gonzales on the radio from Denver, and remebers names like Jorge Angel Guiterrez before they got bought out. That flame still burns in her poetry even if she is a big time poet and a department head at a gavacho university. Read these poems, read them outloud, listen and u will hear yourselfI can remember in 1970 flying from Cairo Illinois where white cops and racist Klansman had intimidated and shot and murdered and embattled Black workers and farmers into a state of terror to Crystal City Texas, where La Raza Unida, a Chicano political party based on working class and farming Chicanos, and white and black workers drawn to the same needs ran Zavalla County. The Chicano militancy of the 60s and the 1970s road on the backs of the Black and Puerto Rican struggles, rode on the backs on the open ears it had for Che and Fidel, for what was happening then in Chile, and from the fights in Mexico. It exploded across Texas, across California, across New Mexico, and Colorado, even in places like Minneapolis and Chicago, long before the millions of Mexicans who have come since then arrived. This volcano erupted then, not as some freak occurrence, but because a people oppressed, denied their nationality will rise and fight until they gain their justice. . Yet, the volcano of another Chicano revolt is simmering. Like all volcanoes, like the volcanoes under Blacks, and Puerto Ricans, under workers in and out of unions, under women, the longer the volcano does not explode, the bigger the explosion, the more it can blow the top off the mountain and let the lava flow, hot and burning, sweeping away the oppression of capitalism, remaking the world, making us free. Que Viva La Raza

Blissfully twisted!

Emplumada is amongst the greatest pieces that i have endulged in. the piece is taintinizing with it's emotionally deep twists and extreme display of emotions. the uniquely devised reflections devour my every thought and spand of atttention....

One of the all time best in Chicano Literature

Cervantes's collection is spectacular and has risen above all Chicano poetry collectionsl. Along with Gary Soto's "Elements of San Joaquin," Cervantes gives of some of the best poetry Chicano Literature has to offer.

Beautiful poetry!

I had to reluctantly read this book of poetry for class and ended up loving it! The poems are beautiful! I definitely recommend it.