The Latin deli: prose and poetry

✍ Scribed by Judith Ortiz Cofer

• Publisher: University of Georgia Press
• Year: 2012;2010
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 118 KB
• Category: Fiction

✦ Synopsis

Reviewing her novel, The Line of the Sun , the New York Times Book Review hailed Judith Ortiz Cofer as "a writer of authentic gifts, with a genuine and important story to tell." Those gifts are on abundant display in The Latin Deli , an evocative 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. Following the directive of Emily Dickinson to "tell all the Truth but tell it slant," Cofer approaches her material from a variety of angles.

An acute yearning for a distant homeland is the poignant theme of the title poem, which opens the collection. Cofer's lines introduce us "to a woman of no-age" presiding over a small store whose wares--Bustelo coffee, jamon y queso, "green plantains hanging in stalks like votive offerings"--must satisfy, however imperfectly, the needs and hungers of those who have left the...