LITR 5731: Seminar in American Minority Literature
University of Houston-Clear Lake, spring 2003
Poetry Presentation Summary

“For Virginia Chavez” by Lorna Dee Cervantes

Reader/Discussion Leader – Ashley Salter

Recorder – Tomasina Alford

About the author

Lorna Dee Cervantes was born in California in 1954.  She grew up in a household where her parents insisted that she and her brother speak only English.  This was a reaction to the racism they saw in their community.  (Not speaking Spanish at home did not keep Cervantes from learning Spanish and weaving it through her poetry.  This isn’t evident in “For Virginia Chavez” but can be seen in some of her other poems.)  Cervantes describes herself as “a Chicana writer, a feminist writer, a political writer.”  Apparently, she’s also a politically active person – she’s been arrested ten times for civil disobedience.

Cervantes is a widely recognized poet.   Her poetry has won numerous awards, been translated into five languages, and been included in 160 anthologies.  Despite this success, Cervantes says she’s not a very self-confident writer. And she doesn’t send out many manuscripts because she fears rejection.  In addition to her poetry writing, Cervantes edits novels and teaches creative writing at a Colorado university.

About the poem

In the poem, you meet two young women who grow up very fast.  They are friends whose lives take them in different directions.

Some things to consider as you hear  or read the poem:

Ø      To what extent are the girls voiceless and choiceless?  How do they react to their situation?

Ø      How does one girl use education as a path to empowerment?  Does she gain a voice and choices?  What happens to the other girl?

Ø      How does all of this affect their friendship?

The last time a class discussed this poem, they wondered if the two girls were actually two sides of one person, perhaps her reality and the way she wishes she was. 

Interpretation

This is a love poem to a dear friend.  It’s not a romantic love poem, but a celebration of friendship and a kind of love that is perhaps more substantial and less fleeting than romantic love.  In the first stanza, the girls equate physical intimacy with love and the narrator tells us, “that was all we were ever offered.”  In the second stanza, the narrator reads love poems to her friend and explains the words to her.  After this the girls are separated for a long time.  The narrator remembers “the love that was a language in itself.”  By the time of the actions in the fourth stanza, the two women have figured out the value of friendship and the love that is shown rather than told in the way they hold on to each other walking back to the apartment, “[ignoring] what the years brought between us.”

Discussion Questions

Cervantes has said that her poems are strategically autobiographical.  Assuming that “For Virginia Chavez” is at least informed by poet’s life if not drawn directly from it: What do you think her strategy is?  What is she trying to say or demonstrate?  What is her agenda?

Is she trying to share with readers the experience of being Mexican American?  The experience of being a woman?  The experience of being a Mexican American woman? 

Which identity comes through more strongly in the poem – gender or ethnicity?  Does this change from stanza to stanza?

Discussion Summary

A good bit of the class discussion dealt with the contents of the third stanza.  Some lines in that section probably – but not necessarily – refer to the second woman being beaten by a man in her life.  Ginger mentioned child abuse.  Jennifer agreed that a male in her life seems to have beaten the narrator’s friend.  Rosalyn posed the question of what happened to this woman that her children would be taken away from her.  She also suggested that the woman seems to feel the loss of her kids like losing a possession.  Toni commented that a repeated cycle of abuse would lead to the kids being removed from the household.

Jana said she thought upon first reading the passage that it was referring to the woman giving birth.  Elizabeth also said she read the stanza as being about the girl giving birth to the baby she conceived at fourteen.  She thought the baby was taken away from the girl because she was so young.  Someone pointed out that the poem refers to more than one child, however.  Rosalyn said she feels like the narrator’s friend is speaking directly in the third stanza, ranting and expressing her hurt about abuse from a man.  She pointed out that the mention of blood and a woman can easily be interpreted as giving birth or being beaten.  Dr. White lent his support to the abuse reading, pointing out that the woman seems to wake up after losing consciousness.  And, he said, the purple blossoms definitely sound like bruises.

A few class members agreed with reading the work as a love poem or a tribute to friendship.  Rosalyn saw the girls searching through physical and romantic expressions of love and finding that their love for each other is the only thing that can be counted on.  Ginger mentioned girl bonding and how girls do talk about love with their friends.  One girl indulged and became pregnant, she interprets, but the writer didn’t.  She sees in the poem an unspoken love between two close friends, a sympathetic tone, and the girls coming back together despite their differences.

The class also talked about education and literacy.  Jana questioned whether the narrator’s friend was able to read or even speak English, because her friend explains the love poems to her.  Martin noted how the poem compares the lives of two friends whose lives have diverged – one went to college and has no children, the other has no education but had children at early age.  Dr. White offered some thoughts on seeing the poem in a minority context.  Two things – education level and age at first birth (which are related) suggest that the poem is about minority women thought it is not explicitly stated.  For Mexican Americans, these factors also determine their ambivalence or attitude about assimilating into the dominant culture.