Judith Ortiz Cofer "American History"

The New Georgia Encyclopedia has a good entry about Judith Ortiz Cofer here. The author's own web page is also available here. You can read an interesting personal essay by Ortiz Cofer here. This link gives you a chance to watch a video of the author giving a lecture at the University of Wisconsin in 2000. Two of her poems are available online here, as well as a useful Puerto Rican History timeline with links to images.

The story is set in Paterson, New Jersey, in the 1960s. Here is a good summary of New Jersey history (the last three paragraphs are maybe the most directly relevant). Another history website specifically about Paterson is here. If you need a good brief history of immigration in the US, this page by the Center for Immigration Studies is a good place to start. A helpful overview of Puerto Rico-US relations can be found on this site, including the current debates over independence.

How does this story portray the many different scales in all our lives? Remember, the smallest scale is the individual and her own thoughts and feelings and the largest scale is the universe, with family, neighborhood, city, region, nation, world all ranged in between. Each of these scales has its own power relations and conflicts that might include gender, race, ethnicity, political beliefs, religion, age, nationality, class, region, and more.

How does the story represent the "place" of Elena's world? If you had to define the place of this story, which social and cultural networks and personal relationships would you include? What would the map of this place look like if you tried to draw it, including the connections to "outside" or other places?