Emplumada

A few years after the time I talk about here, I met Lorna, she was a high school student, realizing that she was more than "gifted" student, realizing she was connected to the fires and fiths of her people. I can remember LDC telling me how she strained to hear Corky Gonzales on the radio from Denver, and remebers names like Jorge Angel Guiterrez before they got bought out. That flame still burns in her poetry even if she is a big time poet and a department head at a gavacho university. Read these poems, read them outloud, listen and u will hear yourselfI can remember in 1970 flying from Cairo Illinois where white cops and racist Klansman had intimidated and shot and murdered and embattled Black workers and farmers into a state of terror to Crystal City Texas, where La Raza Unida, a Chicano political party based on working class and farming Chicanos, and white and black workers drawn to the same needs ran Zavalla County. The Chicano militancy of the 60s and the 1970s road on the backs of the Black and Puerto Rican struggles, rode on the backs on the open ears it had for Che and Fidel, for what was happening then in Chile, and from the fights in Mexico. It exploded across Texas, across California, across New Mexico, and Colorado, even in places like Minneapolis and Chicago, long before the millions of Mexicans who have come since then arrived. This volcano erupted then, not as some freak occurrence, but because a people oppressed, denied their nationality will rise and fight until they gain their justice. . Yet, the volcano of another Chicano revolt is simmering. Like all volcanoes, like the volcanoes under Blacks, and Puerto Ricans, under workers in and out of unions, under women, the longer the volcano does not explode, the bigger the explosion, the more it can blow the top off the mountain and let the lava flow, hot and burning, sweeping away the oppression of capitalism, remaking the world, making us free. Que Viva La Raza

Emplumada is amongst the greatest pieces that i have endulged in. the piece is taintinizing with it's emotionally deep twists and extreme display of emotions. the uniquely devised reflections devour my every thought and spand of atttention....

Cervantes's collection is spectacular and has risen above all Chicano poetry collectionsl. Along with Gary Soto's "Elements of San Joaquin," Cervantes gives of some of the best poetry Chicano Literature has to offer.

I had to reluctantly read this book of poetry for class and ended up loving it! The poems are beautiful! I definitely recommend it.