Books by Judith Ortiz Cofer

A 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.

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.

"I am learning the alchemy of grief-how it must be carefully measured and doled out, inflicted-but I have not yet mastered this art," writes Judith Ortiz Cofer in The Cruel Country. This richly textured, deeply moving, lyrical memoir centers on Cofer's return to her native Puerto Rico after her mother has been diagnosed with late-stage lung cancer.

A Spanish-language edition of ""The Latin Deli"", Judith Cofer's prizewinning collection of short stories, personal essays, and poems. This work opens a door into the lives of the Puerto Rican immigrants who live in or near an urban New Jersey tenement known as the ""El Building"".

In this collection of essays woven with poems and folklore, Judith Ortiz Cofer tells the story of how she became a poet and writer. 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. 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, Mujer frente al sol will be invaluable to students of poetry and creative nonfiction and will be a staple in every creative writing classroom as well as an inspirat

A collection of essays interwoven 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 practise her art.

Judith Ortiz Cofer's third volume of poetry collects thirty-four poems. In places as stark as a New Jersey barrio or fabled as the island home of Penelope and Odysseus, the people in these poems sometimes resist, sometimes reconcile, multiple cultures, tongues, and traditions as they navigate over ever changing landscapes.