Judith Ortiz Cofer
Photo courtesy of the author

Born in Puerto Rico in 1952, Judith Ortiz Cofer moved to the United States in her youth due to her father’s service in the U.S. Army during the Korean War and in the U.S. Navy during the Cuban Missile Crisis. As an award-winning poet, essayist, and novelist, Cofer explores her bilingual and multicultural life in several autobiographical works, including the novel The Line of the Sun (1991) and her personal narrative Silent Dancing: A Partial Remembrance of a Puerto Rican Childhood (1990). Her latest novel, The Meaning of Consuelo (2003), focuses on a young girl coming of age in Puerto Rico in the 1950s and the tension between the traditional island culture and the increasing presence of American ways of life, often imported by returning war veterans. Called "a novelist of historical compass and sensitivity" by the New York Times, Cofer has received the PEN/Martha Albrand Special Citation for Nonfiction, among other awards. She is the Franklin Professor of English at the University of Georgia.

Her Papá, our abuelo, had had a taste of politics during World War II, when he had become a sort of Angel to Widows and Orphans. It had been his job to break the news of a son or husband’s death to the women in his pueblo, as the mayor had become grief-stricken and incapable of performing this most delicate of duties after his only son had been killed early in the war.

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