Translating in the contact zone

The purpose of this article is to analyze the hybrid language used in the U.S. by a generation who think brown and write brown. I am referring to the so-called one-and-a-halfers, a generation that includes writers such as Gloria Anzaldúa, Cherríe Moraga, Sandra Cisneros, Pat Mora, Ilan Stavans, Ana Lydia Vega, Ana Castillo, Helena Viramontes, Esmeralda Santiago, or Tato Laviera, to name but a few. I aim to analyze how many migrants and refugees use language in a way that destroys consensus. It is in these spaces where the migration movements of the multiple souths talk back in a weird language which the Establishment fears. In these circumstances, translation becomes a tool to raise questions that disturb the universal promises of monolingualism.

Cultural Ecofeminism in Pat Mora's Poetry

Eco-feminist writers, in general, investigate the relationship between the oppression of women and the degradation of nature. Cultural ecofeminism, as a branch of ecofeminism, reclaims the twinning of nature with women in terms of productivity and bounty. Cultural eco-feminists emphasize a kind of affinity between elements of nature such as land, woods, desert….etc. and women, in an attempt to reach out to a better cultural community. They try to integrate their views of nature with culture. With such perspective, the current study approaches the poetry of the Mexican American poet, Pat Mora (1942-). Mora's attachment to the Mexican environment and culture greatly influences her literary output which is imbued with images of the desert stressing the cultural concept of the desert as a mother who is endowed with a healing power. She believes that one's culture and environment knit one's heritage and the process of recovering heritage conditions reviving cultural traditions, concepts, practices, values, beliefs and character of place. Thus, her writings focus on the cultural value of land, of communal identities and the Latino mythologies. She depicts Latino people who dwell in a harsh desert from which she unearths the stories of the past to heal the present with special emphasis on the role of land/ desert as a healer by exploiting the image of the curandera, the woman healer in the Mexican culture.

Poetic Negotiations: Salad Bowl Feminism in Selected Poetry of Fehmida Riaz, Pat Mora and Joan Loveridge-Sanbonmatsu

The research attempts to evaluate the depiction of women's oppression in specific postcolonial contexts at the hands of the interlocked power pattern formed by manifold factors like patriarchy, class conflict, religion, ethnicity and imperialism in the selected poetry of the renowned Pakistani poetess Fehmida Riaz, the Latino American Poetess Pat Mora, and the Japanese poetess Sanbonmatsu. It applies the theory of Postcolonial Feminism to bring to the fore the oppression of postcolonial women at the intersection of gender, class, race, religion and culture, hence, offering a critique of Western Feminist discourse and its slogan of sisterhood, which tends to erase heterogeneity in women's situations across the globe. The theory of Third World Feminism as well as the portrayals in these poetic compositions from a variety of postcolonial social formations, highlight the fact that postcolonial women are not a monolithic and archetypal suffering category as presented in Western discourses; instead, their resistant agency and subversive subjectivity also stands at the center of their creative writings.

Bookjoy! Día to Celebrate 25 Years: A Visit with Founder Pat Mora

It’s no surprise that passing along her love of literature—or “bookjoy!” as she calls it—has always been important to Pat Mora, award-winning author and literacy advocate.In fact, she compares her love of reading to her love of ice cream: “When you love ice cream, you want everyone else to like it. You think, ‘Oh, that’s delicious,’ and you don’t want anyone to miss the pleasure.”

Land dreaming: identidades y arraigo en la escritura de Sharon Blackie y Pat Mora

Land dreaming: identidades y arraigo en la escritura de Sharon Blackie y Pat MoraResumen: Las obras de Sharon Blackie y Pat Mora enfatizan la necesidad de una mayor conexión de los individuos con el medio natural. Desde la necesidad personal de fortalecer los vínculos de pertenencia a un lugar y una comunidad, las dos autoras exploran sus raíces y el entramado de la historia personal. De la respuesta artística a esa necesidad surgen narrativas y poéticas que reconocen representaciones antiguas y actuales sobre el cuidado del planeta, y el de tradiciones, relatos y mitos de los lugares que habitamos.Palabras clave: Construcción de identidades, tránsitos, arraigo, pertenencia, econarrativa, ecopoética.Land Dreaming: Identities and Belonging in Sharon Blackie’s and Pat Mora’s writingAbstract: The works of Sharon Blackie and Pat Mora emphasize the need for connection with the natural environment. Given the need to strengthen bonds of belonging to the community as key for the construction of identities, both writers explore their roots to produce narratives and poetics that name former and current representations of what unites us to this planet. Similarly, they argue about the relevancy of old and current representations, traditions, stories and myths of the places we inhabit.Key words: Identity construction, transitions, settling, belonging, econarrative, ecopoetry.

Land dreaming: identidades y arraigo en la escritura de Sharon Blackie y Part Mora

Las obras de Sharon Blackie y Pat Mora enfatizan la necesidad de una mayor conexión de los individuos con el medio natural. Desde la necesidad personal de fortalecer los vínculos de pertenencia a un lugar y una comunidad, las dos autoras exploran sus raíces y el entramado de la historia personal. De la respuesta artística a esa necesidad surgen narrativas y poéticas que econocen representaciones antiguas y actuales sobre el cuidado del planeta, y el de tradiciones, elatos y mitos de los lugares que habitamos.

The Insider Perspective: Insights on Diversity from Award-Winning Diverse Authors

There is perhaps no better source to speak about diverse literature than the “insider” authors who have been writing it for years. We were fortunate to speak with three accomplished authors of diverse books for children who invite students into their books—Pat Mora, Kadir Nelson, and Janet Wong. Invited to participate in phone and e-mail interviews based on their reputation for publishing diverse books, each author shares his or her perspective on this timely topic.