Poet Lorna Dee Cervantes, luminary of Chicana literature, will bare her heart and her heritage during her Visiting Writers Series appearance at 7:30 p.m. Wednesday, Feb. 12, at the Eidson-Duckwall Recital Hall.
As a child growing up in San Francisco, Cervantes was urged by her parents to suppress her Native American and Mexican roots for her own protection. But Spanish returned to her tongue as soon as she found her voice as a poet.
It’s appropriate that the title of Cervantes’ American Book Award-winning collection Emplumada, published in 1981, doesn’t have a direct English translation, but instead is a mash-up of words meaning “pen flourish” and “feathers.” Not merely a harbinger of the wordplay to come, the inventive language invites the reader to consider multiple translations of her words, which often chronicle complex dilemmas related to identity, gender, and nationality.
In one of the collection’s most notable poems, “Beneath the Shadow of the Freeway,” Cervantes watches the city winds shake the limbs of her family tree. Having at one time lived with her mother and grandmother under the same roof, the poet finds herself still torn between opposing perspectives. In her mother’s estimation, Cervantes and her grandmother both “get nothing but shit” for “being soft.” Yet the poet sees wisdom in the eldest woman’s ways.
Before rain I notice seagulls.
They walk in flocks,
cautious across lawns; splayed toes,
indecisive beaks. Grandma says
seagulls mean storm.
In California in the summer,
mockingbirds sing all night.
Grandma says they are singing for their nesting wives.
“they don’t leave their families
borrachando.”
She likes the ways of birds,
respects how they show themselves
for toast and a whistle.
She believes in myths and birds.
She trusts only what she builds
with her own hands.
A self-made success, Cervantes literary career has spanned nearly four decades, earning her additional accolades including the Wallace-Reader’s Digest Award, the Paterson Prize for Poetry, and a Latino Literature Award.
Don’t miss a chance to see an empowering poet with your own eyes. And to warm your ears with birdsongs from a California summer.