Z
818 q Z q ZAMORA, BERNICE B. ORTIZ (1938– ) Bernice Ortiz Zamora is one of the preeminent poets to emerge from the Chicano movement of the 1960s and 1970s. She has affirmed the importance of Chicano oral tradition and communal heritage to her writing, which reveals the keen eye of both social critic and mystic. She has wielded her pen to address the politics of language and race, sexual double standards, and the complex legacies of colonization and community. As a poet whose writing operates on multiple levels, she delights in the various dimensions of meaning possible in mixing Spanish and English. Many of Zamora’s poems reflect her family’s deep roots in southern Colorado: six generations of farmers on her father’s side and countless generations of Tewa and Acoma descent on her mother’s side. Like her parents , she was born in Aguilar, a village at the foot of the East Spanish Peak. In 1945 her family moved to Pueblo. Her father worked as a coal miner and then a car painter; when he became disabled, her mother took a job in an optical shop. Zamora, the oldest of five children and a precocious reader from the age of three, attended Catholic schools through the eighth grade. In high school she began to develop her artistic talent and to explore philosophy. After graduating she worked in a bank. It was in college that she developed her passion for writing. She entered Southern Colorado University in 1968 and majored in English and French. Inspired by Emily Dickinson and Japanese poetry, she began to write poems in English, Spanish, and Caló, experimenting with a range of techniques and styles. By this time she had married and become the mother of two daughters, Rhonda and Katarina. In 1972 she completed an M.A. degree at Colorado State University in Fort Collins, writing a thesis on the poetry of Wallace Stevens and Francis Ponge. In the same year her award-winning first short story, “Flexion,” was published in Caracol. Involvement in the Chicano movement was a heady defining period in her life. In 1974 her marriage ended, and she moved to California with her daughters to pursue a Ph.D. at Stanford University. While juggling family duties, literary studies, and teaching jobs, she became active in the movement, which she credited with accomplishing “a great deal in diminishing the degree of isolation we felt before we became visible to each other. . . . It was . . . the catalyst to cultural cohesiveness .” Zamora became part of a lively community, joining Trabajadores Culturales of San Jose and other groups. She and literati such as Alurista, Ron Arias, and Cecilia and José Antonio Burciaga gathered monthly to share their work. Because a vibrant part of this movement focused on community empowerment, Zamora and other poets served as “cultural workers,” doing readings at bookstores , churches, parks, and college campuses from coast to coast. Through their poetry they countered racial stereotypes, proudly reclaimed ethnic heritage, and challenged social injustice and inequity. Zamora boldly critiqued sexism not only in the larger society but also in the ethnic community and the movement. Her poems often addressed the experiences and concerns of women, as in “Notes from a Chicana ‘Coed’ ” who wakes up “alone each morning and ask[s], / ‘Can I feed my children today?’ ” Like many Chicana activists , Zamora called attention to survival issues rarely broached by European American feminists of the era. Zamora was one of the first Chicana poets to publish a volume of verse: Restless Serpents, a back-toback book featuring her work and that of José Antonio Burciaga, appeared in 1976. In this landmark work, deftly mixing Spanish and English, her scope encompassed identity, religion, gender relations, language, politics, and love. As literary scholar Juan Bruce-Novoa said, “Restless Serpents is a must for any serious student of Chicano literature.” Of her title poem, Zamora has remarked, “For me [it] was a metaphor of that act . . . the writing of poetry.” In 1994 Restless Serpents reappeared in a stand-alone edition, retitled Releasing Serpents and augmented by thirty new poems. Concerned by the need of Chicano youth for texts reflecting their experiences and culture, Zamora helped nurture the growth of ethnic literature. In 1979 she moved to New Mexico to work on the journal De Zárate, Rosa Marta 819 q Bernice Zamora painting with watercolors. Photograph by and courtesy of Valerie J. Matsumoto. Colores. She coedited early anthologies of Chicano literature from the Flor y Canto Festivals...
OR
Buy This Book in Print