Judy Lucero

Judy A. Lucero (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 at the age of 28 from a brain hemorrhage.[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.