A Study Guide for Judith Ortiz Cofer's "Bad Influence"

A Study Guide for Judith Ortiz Cofer's Author: Gale, Cengage Learning
Publisher: Gale, Cengage Learning
ISBN: 1410340813
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 28

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Book Description

A Study Guide for Judith Ortiz Cofer's "Bad Influence"

A Study Guide for Judith Ortiz Cofer's Author: Gale, Cengage Learning
Publisher: Gale, Cengage Learning
ISBN: 1410340813
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 28

Get Book Here

Book Description


A Study Guide for Judith Ortiz Cofer's "Bad Influence"

A Study Guide for Judith Ortiz Cofer's Author: Cengage Learning Gale
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781375376792
Category : Study Aids
Languages : en
Pages : 38

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Book Description
A Study Guide for Judith Ortiz Cofer's "Bad Influence," excerpted from Gale's acclaimed Literature of Developing Nations for Students. This concise study guide includes plot summary; character analysis; author biography; study questions; historical context; suggestions for further reading; and much more. For any literature project, trust Literature of Developing Nations For Students for all of your research needs.

An Island Like You

An Island Like You PDF Author: Judith Ortiz Cofer
Publisher: Scholastic Inc.
ISBN: 0545281547
Category : Young Adult Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 142

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Book Description
Judith Ortiz Cofer's Pura Belpre award-winning collection of short stories about life in the barrio! Rita is exiled to Puerto Rico for a summer with her grandparents after her parents catch her with a boy. Luis sits atop a six-foot mountain of hubcaps in his father's junkyard, working off a sentence for breaking and entering. Sandra tries to reconcile her looks to the conventional Latino notion of beauty. And Arturo, different from his macho classmates, fantasizes about escaping his community. They are the teenagers of the barrio -- and this is their world.

If I Could Fly

If I Could Fly PDF Author: Judith Ortiz Cofer
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux (BYR)
ISBN: 1466801808
Category : Young Adult Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 192

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Book Description
If I Could Fly is a standalone novel based on characters introduced in Judith Ortiz Cofer's bestselling short story collection, An Island Like You: Stories of the Barrio, which won the inaugural Pura Belpré Award. Fifteen-year-old Doris is used to taking care of herself. Her musician parents have always spent more time singing in nightclubs than watching after her. But when her ailing mother goes home to Puerto Rico to get well and pursue a singing career there, and her father finds a new girlfriend, Doris is more alone than she's ever been. Disconnected from her family and her best friends, who are intertwined in terrifying relationships with a violent classmate, Doris finds refuge in taking care of homing pigeons on her apartment building's roof. As Doris tries to make sense of it all, she learns that, just like the pigeons, she might have to fly far distances before she finds out where she belongs.

The Latin Deli

The Latin Deli PDF Author: Judith Ortiz Cofer
Publisher: University of Georgia Press
ISBN: 0820342718
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 186

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Book Description
Reviewing her novel, The Line of the Sun, the New York Times Book Review hailed Judith Ortiz Cofer as "a writer of authentic gifts, with a genuine and important story to tell." Those gifts are on abundant display in The Latin Deli, an evocative collection of poetry, personal essays, and short fiction in which the dominant subject—the lives of Puerto Ricans in a New Jersey barrio—is drawn from the author's own childhood. Following the directive of Emily Dickinson to "tell all the Truth but tell it slant," Cofer approaches her material from a variety of angles. An acute yearning for a distant homeland is the poignant theme of the title poem, which opens the collection. Cofer's lines introduce us "to a woman of no-age" presiding over a small store whose wares—Bustelo coffee, jamon y queso, "green plantains hanging in stalks like votive offerings"—must satisfy, however imperfectly, the needs and hungers of those who have left the islands for the urban Northeast. Similarly affecting is the short story "Nada," in which a mother's grief over a son killed in Vietnam gradually consumes her. Refusing the medals and flag proferred by the government ("Tell the Mr. President of the United States what I say: No, gracias."), as well as the consolations of her neighbors in El Building, the woman begins to give away all her possessions The narrator, upon hearing the woman say "nada," reflects, "I tell you, that word is like a drain that sucks everything down." As rooted as they are in a particular immigrant experience, Cofer's writings are also rich in universal themes, especially those involving the pains, confusions, and wonders of growing up. While set in the barrio, the essays "American History," "Not for Sale," and "The Paterson Public Library" deal with concerns that could be those of any sensitive young woman coming of age in America: romantic attachments, relations with parents and peers, the search for knowledge. And in poems such as "The Life of an Echo" and "The Purpose of Nuns," Cofer offers eloquent ruminations on the mystery of desire and the conflict between the flesh and the spirit. Cofer's ambitions as a writer are perhaps stated most explicitly in the essay "The Myth of the Latin Woman: I Just Met a Girl Named Maria." Recalling one of her early poems, she notes how its message is still her mission: to transcend the limitations of language, to connect "through the human-to-human channel of art."

The Line of the Sun

The Line of the Sun PDF Author: Judith Ortiz Cofer
Publisher: University of Georgia Press
ISBN: 0820340103
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 302

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Book Description
“A colorful, revealing portrait of Puerto Rican culture and domestic relationship” from the award-winning poet and author of An Island Like You (Publishers Weekly). Set in the 1950s and 1960s, The Line of the Sun moves from a rural Puerto Rican village to a tough immigrant housing project in New Jersey, telling the story of a Hispanic family’s struggle to become part of a new culture without relinquishing the old. At the story’s center is Guzmán, an almost mythic figure whose adventures and exile, salvation and return leave him a broken man but preserve his place in the heart and imagination of his niece, who is his secret biographer. “Cofer . . . reveals herself to be a prose writer of evocatively lyrical authority, a novelist of historical compass and sensitivity . . . One recognizes in the rich weave and vigorous elegance of the language of The Line of the Sun a writer of authentic gifts, with a genuine and important story to tell.”—The New York Times Book Review “There is great strength in the way Cofer evokes the fierce, loving, and brave Latin spirit that is the novel’s real theme.”—Joyce Johnson, National Book Critics Circle Award-winning author “The Line of the Sun reads like a dream, from the beautifully realized description of the deceptive Paradise Lost, to the utterly different but equally vivid world of the urban North . . . This is a splendid first novel.”—The State (Columbia, South Carolina) “The writing in this superb novel stuns and surprises at every turn. Its sensuality and imagery . . . are riveting.”—The San Juan Star

Silent Dancing

Silent Dancing PDF Author: Judith Ortiz Cofer
Publisher: Arte Publico Press
ISBN: 9781611920307
Category : Young Adult Nonfiction
Languages : en
Pages : 172

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Book Description
Silent Dancing is a personal narrative made up of Judith Ortiz CoferÍs recollections of the bilingual-bicultural childhood which forged her personality as a writer and artist. The daughter of a Navy man, Ortiz Cofer was born in Puerto Rico and spent her childhood shuttling between the small island of her birth and New Jersey. In fluid, clear, incisive prose, as well as in the poems she includes to highlight the major themes, Ortiz Cofer has added an important chapter to autobiography, Hispanic American Creativity and womenÍs literature. Silent Dancing has been awarded the 1991 PEN/Martha Albrand Special Citation for Nonfiction and has been selected for The New York Public LibraryÍs 1991 Best Books for the Teen Age.

Call Me Maria (First Person Fiction)

Call Me Maria (First Person Fiction) PDF Author: Judith Ortiz Cofer
Publisher: Scholastic Inc.
ISBN: 0545913071
Category : Juvenile Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 129

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Book Description
A new novel from the award-winning author of An Island Like You, winner of the Pura Belpre Award. Maria is a girl caught between two worlds: Puerto Rico, where she was born, and New York, where she now lives in a basement apartment in the barrio. While her mother remains on the island, Maria lives with her father, the super of their building. As she struggles to lose her island accent, Maria does her best to find her place within the unfamiliar culture of the barrio. Finally, with the Spanglish of the barrio people ringing in her ears, she finds the poet within herself. In lush prose and spare, evocative poetry, Cofer weaves a powerful novel, bursting with life and hope.

Woman in Front of the Sun

Woman in Front of the Sun PDF Author: Judith Ortiz Cofer
Publisher: University of Georgia Press
ISBN: 9780820322421
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 148

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Book Description
In this collection of essays woven with poems and folklore, Judith Ortiz Cofer tells the story of how she became a poet and writer and explores her love of words, her discovery of the magic of language, and her struggle to carve out time to practice her art. A native of Puerto Rico, Cofer came to the mainland as a child. Torn between two cultures and two languages, she learned early the power of words and how to wield them. She discovered her love for the subtleties, sounds, and rhythms of the written word when a Roman Catholic nun and teacher bent on changing traditions for the better gave her books of high literature to read, some of which were forbidden by the church. Later, as an adult, demands from her family and her profession made it difficult for Cofer to find time to devote to her art, but her need and determination to express herself led to solutions that can help all artists challenged with the limits of time. Cofer recalls the family cuentos, or stories, that inspire her and shows how they speak to all artists, all women, all people. She encourages her readers to insist on the right to be themselves and to pursue their passions. A book that entertains, instructs, and enthralls, Woman in Front of the Sun will be invaluable to students of poetry and creative nonfiction and will be a staple in every creative writing classroom as well as an inspiration to all those who write.

Bad Dog? Good Dog!

Bad Dog? Good Dog! PDF Author: Rob Waring
Publisher: Foundations Reading Library: L
ISBN: 9781413027631
Category : Foreign Language Study
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
Mrs. Lee asks Yoon-Hee and Ji-Sung to go to the store. They see their friend Farina on the way to the store. She is walking her dogs. Yoon-Hee offers to walk a big dog named Dingo follows the store. Ji-Sung complains that he does not like dogs so he plays his game instead. Yoon-Hee asks Ji-Sung to wait with Dingo while she goes into the store. He waits with Dingo but does not watch him. Dingo takes the meat that Yoon-Hi bought for their mother and runs away. He gives the meat to his puppies. Dingo is a bad dog but a good father.