Emplumada
# Emplumada

Part of a series on :

Chicanos and Mexican Americans :

Terms

Identity

Chola/o

La Raza

Pachuca

Pachuco

Pinta/o

Xicanx

Concepts

Anti-Mexican sentiment :

History

Early-American Period

Josefa Segovia

Las Gorras Blancas

Mexican–American War

Mutualista

San Elizario Salt War

Sonoratown

Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo

Pre-Chicano Movement

1917 Bath riots

Bisbee Deportation

Bloody Christmas

Bracero program

California agricultural strikes

Cantaloupe strike of 1928

Citrus Strike of 1936

La Matanza

Mexican Repatriation

Operation Wetback

Plan de San Diego

Porvenir Massacre

Sleepy Lagoon trial

Zoot Suit Riots

Chicano Movement

Aztlán

Black-brown unity

Brown Berets

Católicos por La Raza

Centro Cultural

Chicanismo

Chicano Moratorium

Colegio César Chávez

CFMN

Conferencia de Mujeres

CRP

East L.A. walkouts

Hijas de Cuauhtémoc

Huelga schools

Land grant struggle

Las Adelitas de Aztlán

Los Siete de la Raza

Los Seis de Boulder

MANA

MAYO

MEChA

Occupation of Catalina Island

PCUN

Plan Espiritual de Aztlán

Plan de Santa Bárbara

Quinto Sol

Raza Unida Party

United Farm Workers

Post-Chicano Period

1985–1987 cannery strike

1992 Drywall Strike

2019 El Paso shooting

Abolish ICE

Arizona SB 1070

Castro 2020

Chicano Art Exhibit

DACA

Great American Boycott

IRCA

Farah strike

Justice for Janitors

Murder of Selena

Proposition 187

South Central Farm :

Culture

Language

Abrazos, no balazos

Caló

Chicano English

Chicano names

Órale

Food

New Mexican cuisine

Tex-Mex cuisine

Mexican-American cuisine

Music

Chicano rap

Chicano rock

Chicano soul

Tejano music

Symbols

Cal-Style VW

Homies

Lowrider

Lowrider bicycle

Mexican-American folklore

Pancho Claus

Zoot suit :

Literature

Literature

Chicana literature

Chicano literature

Chicano poetry

Autobiographical

Always Running

Living Up the Street

Who Would Have Thought It?

Novels

Bless Me, Ultima

Caballero

Desert Blood

From This Wicked Patch of Dust

Mexican WhiteBoy

The Dirty Girls Social Club

The House on Mango Street

The Rain God

The Revolt of the Cockroach People

So Far from God

Under the Feet of Jesus

...y no se lo tragó la tierra

Poetry and Short Stories

Emplumada

I Am Joaquin

Moment of Silence

Pensamiento Serpentino

The Moths :

Chicana/o studies

Fields

Chicana feminism

Chicanafuturism

Organizations

MAS Programs, Tucson

NACCS

UCLA Chicano Studies Research Center

Texts

Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza

Brown, Not White

The Church in the Barrio

This Bridge Called My Back

Theory

Barrioization

Coyolxauhqui imperative

Gringo justice

Nahui Ollin

Nepantla

New tribalism

Rasquachismo

Spiritual activism

Vergüenza

Youth control complex :

Visual art

Visual Art

Chicana art

Chicano art

Chicano cinema

Paño

Tortilla art

Art Collectives

Asco

Culture Clash

East Los Streetscapers

Los Four

Mujeres Muralistas

Teatro Campesino

Royal Chicano Air Force

Art organizations

Centro de Arte Público

Galería de la Raza

Mission Cultural Center for Latino Arts

Precita Eyes

Self Help Graphics & Art

Locations

Balmy Alley

Chicano Park

Estrada Courts

Great Wall of Los Angeles :

Law

Supreme Court cases

Botiller v. Dominguez

Hernandez v. Texas

San Antonio I.S.D. v. Rodriguez

Espinoza v. Farah Manufacturing Co.

U.S. v. Brignoni-Ponce

Plyler v. Doe

Medellín v. Texas

Flores-Figueroa v. U.S.

Leal Garcia v. Texas

Mendez v. Westminster

Bernal v. Fainter

Perez v. Brownell

DHS v. Regents of the Univ. of Cal.

Federal Court cases

Madrigal v. Quilligan :

Population

Population by City

Arizona (Tucson)

California (Los Angeles)

Illinois (Chicago)

Michigan (Detroit)

Nebraska (Omaha)

Texas

Dallas–Fort Worth

Houston

Multiethnic

Blaxicans

Californios

Nuevomexicanos

Tejanos

Indigenous Mexican Americans

Punjabi Mexican Americans :

Lists

Chicano films

Chicano poets

Chicano rappers

Mexican Americans

Writers

Bibliography :

United States portal

Category

Index :

vte :

Emplumada is the first collection of poetry authored by Lorna Dee Cervantes. It was published in 1981 by University of Pittsburgh Press.

## Synopsis

Cervantes’ first full collection of poetry illustrates the unique experience of a Chicana as she is coming of age. As Lynette Seator writes in her analysis of the work, “The poems of Emplumada tell the story of Cervantes' life, her life as it was given to her and as she learned to live it, taking into herself what was good and turning the bad into a comprehension of social context”.

The work is split into three sections, with the first moving through the protagonist's childhood, the second and third moving through the protagonist's young adulthood and adulthood in the Mexican barrio of San Jose, California. The subject of the work, a 27-year-old Latina woman seems to appear consistently throughout the thirty-nine poems. Sometimes, she appears in the first person, while still other times she appears through an omniscient narrator Seator describes the structure of the poetry as, “an episodic progression through time”.

## Major themes

### Abuse

In the very first poem, “Uncle’s First Rabbit,” Cervantes introduces the image of the Uncle, at around ten years old, seeing his father kick his pregnant mother, until his baby sister is born dead.

    “...remembering that voice
    like his dead baby sister’s,
    remembering his father’s drunken
    kicking that had pushed her into birth”

The cycle of abuse continues, as the Uncle adopts similar behavior. Cervantes writes that the Uncle "finds himself slugging the bloodied face of his wife”

The poem "Meeting Mescalito at Oak Hill Cemetery" alludes to abuse. The poem describes the life of a sixteen-year-old girl trying to escape an abusive household. She refers to an abusive stepfather in the lines

    "...locked my bedroom
    door against the stepfather".

### Rape

In the poems “Lots: I” and “Lots: II”, Cervantes directly addresses the topic of rape. “In ‘Lots: I’ [the protagonist] fights off a rapist...in the succeeding poem, ‘Lots: II’ she is the victim of rape”. Seator attributes the sequential arrangement to Cervantes’ desire to overturn the typical trajectory for a Chicana woman in Chicano/a literature, allowing for the protagonist to assume the place and course of action of a male character in Chicano literature. Seator writes, “her loss of virginity and so of innocence is not the end of her as a viable human being. The author does not, as so many authors before her, do away with the female victim. The poet is determined that she as protagonist live. Loss of innocence is for her, as it has always been for the young male coming of age, a beginning.”

### Identity

A source of tension for Cervantes’ protagonist emanates from her Chicana identity. “These are poems about the experience of growing up Chicana, poems that break away from old stereotypes rooted in the Mexican tradition and wrapped in the myths and the realities of both the Spanish and the Indian heritage”. The protagonist finds herself rooted by her up upbringing as a Chicana, but it is the way in which Cervantes presents this upbringing that reconstructs the identity of a Chicana protagonist. She adopts a strength typically associated with masculine characters. Reviewer Thelma T. Renya speaks of this strength in discussing the poem, “For Virginia Chavez,” when the protagonist's childhood friend has been beaten by her husband. Renya notes that is femininity and female relationships that emit strength. She writes, “it is the inner strength and solidarity of women that help them prevail”.

### Language

Language becomes a source of both vigor and fragility, in that it grants her the ability to communicate, but it also connects her to her Chicana identity. This duality of language finds its crest in the poems “Barco de refugiados” and “Refugee Ship” which exist side by side in the work. Some critics find strength for the protagonist in her use of language. Seator writes, “Language is the linear progression of her history giving her more than a possibility of being. Language is a way of becoming." While other critics find it to be a subjugator, “The worst tool of oppression, in Emplumada, appears to be language,” writes Scheidegger. She attributes language to “traumatic memories” and cites the protagonist's lack of words, manifested in intralinear spaces.

## Publication history

Cervantes read one poem from her collection, “Refugee ship” at the Quinto Festival de los Teatros Chicanos in 1974. She had travelled to Mexico City with her brother, who was performing at the festival with the Theater of the People of San Jose and was asked to do a reading. Her performance was lauded in newspapers and journals.

The collection is somewhat autobiographical. Lorna Dee Cervantes draws heavily from her own personal experiences and her family history. This has caused some friction with members of her family, such as her uncle, who refused to speak to her for many years after Emplumada was published. Cervantes’ personal experiences with racism, sexism, and classism appear constantly in her work.

## Reception

The collection was well received by critics. In 1982, Emplumada was awarded the American Book Award. When it was first published, Emplumada circulated mostly in Chicana magazines. The American Book Award, however, opened the text up to much broader attention.

Lorna Dee Cervantes is hailed as a leader of Chicano/a literature. Emplumada was praised for its ability to represent experiences common to Chicano/a readers while resonating with a universal audience. Reviewers raved over Cervantes’ ability to capture an underrepresented group.

José Saldívar of Revista Chicano-Requeñ'a" wrote “No book has so carefully elucidated what living as a Chicana in the West means… Emplumada offers a number of troubled and delicate portraits of a woman’s world and how that antipatriarchal world has come to have meaning.”

John Addiego of Northwest Review extaled, “Throughout Cervantes’ book there is the sense that an enormous but generally neglected audience being addressed. The Chicana experience, the long-suppressed voices struggling with racism, sexism, poverty, drug abuse, sexual abuse, is formed into a volume of linguistically rich outcries."

