Silent Dancing: A Partial Remembrance of a Puerto Rican Childhood

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Summary: If you haven't read it yet, get it now!
Review: In a seemling easy narrative of remembrance, Ortiz Cofer brillantly weaves in dense yet accessible political thought on the relationship between the colonizer and the colonized through her literary genius: her keen use of metaphor. Ortiz Cofer's outloud conversational tone is engaging and unintimidating even in the face of the deep issues she raises and the hard questions she subtly yet clearly asks. Through "Silent Dancing," Judith Ortiz Cofer takes the reader along for a very enlightening journey through her self-exploration and self-definition. Ortiz Cofer discusses the ways that race, class, gender, and culture interact in shaping her life experiences without sounding dogmatic or naive. "Silent Dancing" is a work of substance, a work worth revisiting again!

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Summary: An intriguing personal narrative worth reading!
Review: Judith Ortiz Cofer's book, Silent Dancing, is an intriguing personal narrative, which creates an instant curiousity within the reader! The structure of this book is creative in that Cofer writes each chapter as a different phase/aspect of her life and creates a desire, for the reader, to read on. Cofer writes of her childhood and specific memories she holds of her family and herself. Her shared memorites of childhood allow her book to be well understood and allow her readers to relate to their own personal childhoods. In addition, Cofer's shared memories of her life in Puerto Rico and the emphasis on her family's culture had on her life, is very insightful. She opens a wide window into the Puerto Rican culture and allows her readers to see her life as it truly was. This book, although well written and very interesting, should not be considered for young readers. The main reason this book should be read by an adult audience is because of some specific content within the book. Questionable references to sex and other material including the use of one profanity makes this book one for adults. Overall, this book is extremely interesting in nature and one which should be read in enjoyment. This book offers great insight into the Puerto Rican culture and allows readers to be reminded of the many different cultures which make up the American culture.

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Summary: She was the serious girl
Review: She was the serious one, the one with the talent, the one whom God made a little stern, with big eyes that took in all the world around her, from the tropical heat of Puerto Rico, to the cold tenements of William Carlos Williams' Paterson, where half the year she lived as though paying penance for an entire family's ambition. Is it any wonder this young girl grew up to be a poet, a novelist, and a taker of incredible artistic risks? As her talents grew, she began to think of herself as belonging, oddly, to two nations, a Northern and Southern hemisphere that corresponded to her own fluidity, her ability to change genre in the middle of a sentence.

Ortiz Cofer has long been one of America's cultural heroes. Now she strips back the legends of her youth to help us see the seeds of creativity which, or so some day, we all have been born with, even when obscured by circumstance. After reading this collection, you will be moved to do some "silent dancing" of your own.