Judy Lucero

Judy A. Lucero (June 12, 1945 - April 1973) (pen name, #21918) was a Chicana prisoner poet, cited as a legend among Latina feminists. ^[1] Lucero had a particularly tough life, becoming a heroin addict after being introduced to drugs at the age of eleven by one of her stepfathers, losing two children and dying in prison in 1973 at the age of 27 from a brain hemorrhage. She had been serving a 1-5 year sentence for attempted forgery. ^{[2] [3] [4]}

Poetry

Lucero's poems were published in 1973 in De Colores Journal, Memoriam: Poems of Judy Lucero after her death. ^{[5] [6]}

In her poem "I Speak an Illusion" she "articulates the contradictions of her Chicana experience while lamenting the apparently unbreakable bonds that incarcerate her." ^[7]

Juan Gómez-Quiñones and Irene Vásquez highlight her work as advocating women's strength, such as in "Jail-Life Walk" which they refer to as "simply gripping". ^[8]

References

1. Olguín, Ben Valdez; Portuguese, Stanford University. Dept. of Spanish and (1995). Testimonios pintaos: the political and symbolic economy of Pinto/a discourse. Stanford University. p. 204.
2. Pèrez-Torres, Rafael (27 January 1995). Movements in Chicano Poetry: Against Myths, Against Margins. Cambridge University Press. p. 117. ISBN   978-0-521-47803-8.
3. Fisher, Dexter (1980). The third woman: minority women writers of the United States. Houghton Mifflin. p. 395. ISBN   978-0-395-27707-2.
4. Olguin, B. V. (2001). "Mothers, Daughters, and Deities: Judy Lucero's Gynocritical Prison Poetics and Materialist Chicana Politics" . Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies. 22 (2): 63–86. doi:10.1353/fro.2001.0021. S2CID   144393765 . Retrieved 8 August 2014.
5. Mullen, Bill; Smethurst, James Edward (2003). Left of the Color Line: Race, Radicalism, and Twentieth-century Literature of the United States. University of North Carolina Press. p. 137. ISBN   978-0-8078-5477-8.
6. Kanellos, Nicolás. Handbook of Hispanic Culture-Literature. Arte Publico Press. p. 107. ISBN   978-1-61192-163-2.
7. Greene, Roland; Cushman, Stephen; Cavanagh, Clare; Jahan Ramazani; Paul F. Rouzer; Harris Feinsod; David Marno; Alexandra Slessarev (2012). The Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics. Princeton University Press. p. 228. ISBN   978-0-691-15491-6.
8. Gómez-Quiñones, Juan; Vásquez, Irene (30 April 2014). Making Aztlán: Ideology and Culture of the Chicana and Chicano Movement, 1966-1977. University of New Mexico Press. p. 274. ISBN   978-0-8263-5467-9.