A Study Guide for Judith Ortiz Cofer's "American History"

By Gale and Cengage

A Study Guide for Judith Ortiz Cofer's "American History," excerpted from Gale's acclaimed Short Stories for Students. This concise study guide includes plot summary; character analysis; author biography; study questions; historical context; suggestions for further reading; and much more. For any literature project, trust Short Stories for Students for all of your research needs.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Cengage Learning - Gale
• Release date: Jul 15, 2016
• ISBN: 9781535818056

Book preview

American History

Judith Ortiz Cofer

1993

Introduction

Judith Ortiz Cofer's short story American History is a coming-of-age tale set in the early 1960s, when racism and segregation were still in full bloom. The story's fourteen-year-old protagonist, Elena, is a Puerto Rican immigrant living with her family in Paterson, New Jersey, when President John F. Kennedy is assassinated. Despite this tragic event, Elena is focused on Eugene, her new neighbor and the object of her daydreams. When Elena visits Eugene that evening, she experiences her own personal tragedy in the form of prejudice.

American History first appeared in Cofer's collection The Latin Deli: Prose and Poetry in 1993. This collection of poetry and prose won two honors: the Anisfield Wolf Book Award in 1994 and a placement on the Georgia Center for the Books Top 25 Reading List. Cofer's story has also been anthologized in the 2002 collection Big City Cool: Short Stories about Urban Youth, edited by M. Jerry Weiss and Helen S. Weiss.

Author Biography

Judith Ortiz Cofer is often referred to as a Latina writer because of her Puerto Rican heritage and her emphasis on the Hispanic experience in her writing. She was born in Hormigueros, Puerto Rico, in 1952. When she was three years old, her family left the island and moved to the United States, finding a home in Paterson, New Jersey. Cofer's father was a member of the U.S. Navy and was stationed at the Brooklyn Navy Yard. Cofer's mother, who missed her homeland, often took Cofer back to Puerto Rico for extended visits. Sometimes Cofer stayed in Puerto Rico long enough to attend school there. This provided Cofer with the strong bicultural background that is reflected in her writing.

The family moved to Georgia when Cofer was a teen. After graduating from high school, Cofer was accepted at Georgia's Augusta College, where she earned an English degree in 1974. She then attended Florida Atlantic University in Boca Raton and received a master's degree in English in 1977. A few years later, Cofer took a teaching position at the University of Georgia at Athens in 1984 and, over twenty years later, was the Regents' and Franklin Professor of English and creative writing at the same university.

Cofer's first published works were poems. In 1986, she won the Riverstone International Chapbook Competition with her collection Peregrina. Though Cofer did not stop writing poetry, she tried her hand at writing fiction, which turned out to be