Lorna Dee Cervantes Biography
There has not been a poet as important to the Chicana movement over the last 40 years as Lorna Dee Cervantes. The award winning poet was born in San Francisco in 1954, Cervantes is of Chicana-Native American descent and many consider her to be the top Chicana poet writing today. Cervantes grew up in San Jose and was force to face racism in her community as a child. Due to this racism, Cervantes chose speak mostly English as she was growing up. Cervantes has always considered herself to be a Chicana writer, a writer for women equality and a writer for political expression. Today, Cervantes is known for her three collections of poetry: Emplumada, From the Cable of Genocide, and Drive: The First Quartet.
In the early 1970s, Cervantes joined the new Chican movement. At this time the movement was mostly male causing Cervantes to face more discrimination. Her writing eventually led her to publishing and in the mid 1970s, she founded the Mango Publications. Mango Publications focused on publishing the work of Chicano and Chicana writers. With help from the National Endowment for the Arts, she was able to continue her publications while still working on her poetry. By the early 1980s Cervantes was gaining popularity for her first collection, Emplumada. At this time Cervantes was mostly published in smal Chicana magazines. Her collection wond the 1982 American Book award which garnered her more attention within the american arts scene.
Cervantes graduated from San Jose Univeristy in 1984 and went on to study at the University of Santa Cruz. After four years of graduate school, Cervantes became editor for Red Dirt magazine. The magazine focused on multicultural literature and gave her and other writers an avenue to express their feelings. Cervantes creative writings and expertise eventually led to a teaching job at the University of Colorado at Boulder.
Cervantes found more fame with her second collection of Poems. From the Cables of Genocide was published in 1991 and includes many of themes that are found in her first collection. Going against the stereotypes of women in society, Cervantes managed to learn from her ancestors and use this knowledge to find wisdom in her writings. Cervantes was able to create a vision of denial and affirmation all while including the economy in her writings of the 1990s.
Her last collection of writings was published in 2006 and has been credited with breathing new life into the Chicano movement. Having won many awards with this collection, Cervantes has proven that she is not going away. Cervantes has over the last fifty years established herself as one of the greatest poets of her generation.