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The Latin Deli: Telling the Lives of Barrio Women
Through her beautifully lyrical writing, Judith Ortiz Cofer tells us of the women's lives that entangled with hers in El Building in Paterson, New Jersey. A community transplanted from what they now view as an island paradise, these Puerto Rican families yearn for the colors and tastes of their former home. As they carve out lives as Americans, their days are filled with drama, success, and sometimes tragedy. A widow becomes crazy after her son is killed in Vietnam, her remaining word "nada." Another woman carries on after the death of her husband, keeping their store, filled with plantain, Bustello coffee, jamon y queso , open as a refuge for her neighbors. And there are Cofer's stories of growing up with a dictatorial and straying father, a caring mother, and a love for language that will lead to a career as a teacher and writer.
192 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1993
16 people are currently reading
379 people want to read
About the author
Judith Ortiz Cofer
44 books109 followersJudith Ortiz Cofer (born in 1952) is a Puerto Rican author. Her work spans a range of literary genres including poetry, short stories, autobiography, essays, and young-adult fiction.
Judith Ortiz Cofer was born in Hormigueros, Puerto Rico, on February 24, 1952. She moved to Paterson, New Jersey with her family in 1956. They often made back-and-forth trips between Paterson and Hormigueros. In 1967, her family moved to Augusta, Georgia, where she attended Butler High School. Ortiz Cofer received a B.A. in English from Augusta College, and later an M.A. in English from Florida Atlantic University.
Ortiz Cofer's work can largely be classified as creative nonfiction. Her narrative self is strongly influenced by oral storytelling, which was inspired by her grandmother, an able storyteller in the tradition of teaching through storytelling among Puerto Rican women. Ortiz Cofer's autobiographical work often focuses on her attempts at negotiating her life between two cultures, American and Puerto Rican, and how this process informs her sensibilities as a writer. Her work also explores such subjects as racism and sexism in American culture, machismo and female empowerment in Puerto Rican culture, and the challenges diasporic immigrants face in a new culture. Among Ortiz Cofer's more well known essays are "The Story of My Body" and "The Myth of the Latin Woman," both reprinted in The Latin Deli.
In 1984, Ortiz Cofer joined the faculty of the University of Georgia, where she is currently Franklin Professor of English and Creative Writing. In April 2010, Ortiz Cofer was inducted into the Georgia Writers Hall of Fame.
In 1994, she became the first Hispanic to win the O. Henry Prize for her story “The Latin Deli”. In 1996, Ortiz Cofer and illustrator Susan Guevara became the first recipients of the Pura Belpre Award for Hispanic children’s literature.
(from Wikipedia)
Judith Ortiz Cofer was born in Hormigueros, Puerto Rico, on February 24, 1952. She moved to Paterson, New Jersey with her family in 1956. They often made back-and-forth trips between Paterson and Hormigueros. In 1967, her family moved to Augusta, Georgia, where she attended Butler High School. Ortiz Cofer received a B.A. in English from Augusta College, and later an M.A. in English from Florida Atlantic University.
Ortiz Cofer's work can largely be classified as creative nonfiction. Her narrative self is strongly influenced by oral storytelling, which was inspired by her grandmother, an able storyteller in the tradition of teaching through storytelling among Puerto Rican women. Ortiz Cofer's autobiographical work often focuses on her attempts at negotiating her life between two cultures, American and Puerto Rican, and how this process informs her sensibilities as a writer. Her work also explores such subjects as racism and sexism in American culture, machismo and female empowerment in Puerto Rican culture, and the challenges diasporic immigrants face in a new culture. Among Ortiz Cofer's more well known essays are "The Story of My Body" and "The Myth of the Latin Woman," both reprinted in The Latin Deli.
In 1984, Ortiz Cofer joined the faculty of the University of Georgia, where she is currently Franklin Professor of English and Creative Writing. In April 2010, Ortiz Cofer was inducted into the Georgia Writers Hall of Fame.
In 1994, she became the first Hispanic to win the O. Henry Prize for her story “The Latin Deli”. In 1996, Ortiz Cofer and illustrator Susan Guevara became the first recipients of the Pura Belpre Award for Hispanic children’s literature.
(from Wikipedia)
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Displaying 1 - 22 of 22 reviews
March 1, 2025
This collection is undoubtedly beautifully written, but I will say, I had to put it down more than once because it left me looking at the world around me with a kind of hopelessness. This collection allowed me to immerse myself in intense cultural vulnerability and beauty, which was wonderful - I felt welcomed into this community. Poetry is not usually something I would gravitate toward, so I admit, I had a bit of trouble really connecting with the poems, but I devoured the short stories. Again, very well written but also quite intense. I particularly enjoyed the essays toward the end.
August 11, 2021
Exceptional! I just love this book. All the stories and poems are cohesive through a Puerto Rican woman's perspective and their experiences in the Diaspora. I particularly love the the 50s, 60, and 70s time period, it brings a lot of awareness to what my mother and the women I grew up experience in the US. We see the deep emotional aspect of what it feels like to leave home at any age, and she writes it so beautifully. My favorite is "Corazon's Café".
April 4, 2017
Loved the snapshots in time and culture. Judith Ortiz Cofer has a way with words that flows so effortlessly and remains timeless.
August 16, 2021
This is a small collection of short stories, essays, and poetry about women's lives. Specifically immigrated Puerto Rican women. Most of these stories, though not all, take place in a community called El Building in Paterson, New Jersey. The themes of many of these stories cover heartache and loss. Some of them, when going outside of the community, address racism. All of them feature women who do what is necessary to survive.
I got this book year and years ago for a feminist literature class in college. We ended up running out of time to read it so its been sitting on my shelf since then. I finally got around to reading it and, while this isn't really my taste in literature, it was very interesting to read from a prospective so different than my own. If you like poetry and literary prose and want to read about the immigrant experience then I highly recommend this.
My personal favorite story is Corazon's Cafe. I cried like a baby.
I got this book year and years ago for a feminist literature class in college. We ended up running out of time to read it so its been sitting on my shelf since then. I finally got around to reading it and, while this isn't really my taste in literature, it was very interesting to read from a prospective so different than my own. If you like poetry and literary prose and want to read about the immigrant experience then I highly recommend this.
My personal favorite story is Corazon's Cafe. I cried like a baby.
January 25, 2019
I really liked this book because it was blend of prose and poetry! Very unique.
I liked reading about the childhood of Judith Ortiz Cofer and how she fought I unjust stereotypes all her life. She truly is an inspiration and hard worker. I am looking forward to discussing this novel in English on Monday.
I liked reading about the childhood of Judith Ortiz Cofer and how she fought I unjust stereotypes all her life. She truly is an inspiration and hard worker. I am looking forward to discussing this novel in English on Monday.
January 6, 2023
This book has lovely poems and passages that reminded me of my grandparents and provided some context to the culture my family came from. I loved the poem “The Witch’s Husband” the most. The discussions on race and class seemed a tiny bit dated and not fleshed out enough to make a true and strong impact. Nevertheless, I enjoyed this book of essays and poems and short stories. 🇵🇷
August 3, 2021
a wonderful storyteller and worthwhile intimate stories with heart and soul. after I read it and now see the book on my bookshelf, I think of the author with warm friendly regard. i wouldn't have minded if this book was twice as long. or there was a volume 2.
June 10, 2022
A beautiful collection of poems, short stories, and essays from Judith Ortiz Cofer based on her childhood. “Paterson Public Library” and “My Grandfather’s Hat” are my favorite from the collection. Reminds me of the House on Mango Street.
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June 17, 2020Stories of women from The building in Paterson New Jersey. Great for high school students.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
March 20, 2021
straight up poetry for most of it. which i kinda liked, made things go by a little faster. I stand by the 4 stars.
May 25, 2022
Prose makes my heart bubble with life— as did this novel.
July 19, 2024
Great prose delving into the inner workings of a Puerto Rican girl from New Jersey.
February 22, 2017
I liked a lot here, in particular seeing how she incorporated poetry with prose and refused to follow a strict chronology, leaving large gaps of her story out of the story. I'm interested in what memoirists choose to leave out, and love to examine the different ways of crafting the guise of wholeness and continuity. Here the author doesn't intend to not interrupt. Without apology she serves you up a poem when you turn the page expecting the prose to continue. The long piece that seems to be fiction is a bit of a conundrum, as are the pieces that are exclusively about other people. But then she never says it's a memoir; it's a deli, a smorgasbord. It just has so much memoir, even autobiography, that I start reading expecting a meal, and in the end am left a little bit hungry. I can't help but be influenced by the fact that I bought this book, indeed learned about Judith Ortiz Cofer only when she died and poets I knew mentioned her in tribute. I looked up her poems that were said to be about cultural identity and a sense of place, themes that are kindred to my own, and immediately fell in love with her writing. Yet it is a strange feeling to have a sudden active interest in someone who died unexpectedly (relatively young) before she was done writing, or rather, while she was at the height of her writing. I can't help but read this book under the banner of knowing more than the author knows; she's writing about going forward with her life, moving into the future she has made happen, which is to become a writer, yet the reader knows how the story really ends. It's faulty if not ridiculous reasoning; obviously everything is written by someone who is not yet dead or thinking of themselves as soon to be... so what's the difference? Maybe it's the closeness in time. She just died, and I never knew her work before, and I feel it's important work for me to know, and it's over, there will be no more. It makes reading her private stories seem slightly invasive. I'm a bit between a 3 and a 4 on this, I am glad I read it, glad to be brought closer to a culture I know little about because I've never been attracted by nature to anything Spanish speaking, and most of the pieces persuade me. I'm looking forward to reading her other books.
June 5, 2016
Yet another wonderful collection from one of my two favorite authors (the other being Elena Ferrante)! Judith Ortiz Cofer writes poetry that touches the heart and prose that stimulates the mind. Her observations of herself and the world as viewed from inside her linguistic and precise mind provide me with infinite points of reflection on my own life as a woman, a writer, and a teacher. Cofer's writing mentors me in my own writing practice, and I am grateful for each book of hers that I read. My favorite pieces in the book are about libraries as sanctuaries and an artist's dedication to his or her craft. She offers poignant advice about how to steal time from oneself to practice an art.
June 19, 2017
I was assigned to read this for a class, but I'm glad I read it. It is a really interesting, and eye-opening look at what it is like to be a Puerto Rican immigrant living in New Jersey. This book is an unusual mixture of short stories, poetry, and nonfiction essays by the author about her upbringing and people in her neighborhood. At only 170 pages, it is a lightweight and easy read that you won't soon forget!
January 11, 2008
great mixture of poetry and prose some stories are better than others and some poems are better than others but overall i really enjoyed it...i dont know if its meant for everyone but....i think everyone should try
May 2, 2012
A great book every Puerto Rican woman should read! heck even those who are not Puerto Rican should read it too. So many of the short stories and poetry rings a bell to those of us and how our family think and act. A must read!
May 2, 2008
This book is really lovely, it is a collection of short stories, poetry and letters. My favorite short story is Corazon's Cafe.
February 16, 2008
Blew dick.
October 13, 2008
Great mixed genre book of growing up PR in the USA. Includes poetry, prose, and non-fiction. Beautiful language.
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April 26, 2017
Judith Ortiz Cofer wrote more than a dozen books between 1987 and her death in 2016, and in the last few months I have worked my way through half of them. But of all her works, The Latin Deli (1993), has to be her masterpiece. A collection of poems, stories, and essays, it highlights the author's command over all these genres and her willingness to play with the lines between them. Like all of her books, this one draws heavily on her past experiences as a Puerto Rican immigrant coming of age in a tenement-like building in Paterson, New Jersey, in the 1960s, but it casts a pretty wide net, bringing into its pages the perspectives of other characters in the same milieu. Incredibly, the book manages to be both a personal recollection and a powerful representation of an entire people, an entire era. This is a balance Ortiz Cofer strove to create in all of her works but rarely accomplished so well.
The poem at the start of the collection, "The Latin Deli: An Ars Poetica," is one of the author's best known works and in my opinion is stronger, more complex, and more memorable than any of the poems that appeared in her previous multigenre collection, Silent Dancing (1990). From the perspective of the woman who scans groceries at the little local store, the poem introduces topics like homesickness, nostalgia, and consumerism that unite the book's other contents. It refers to particular products, like the yellow Café Bustelo can, that the store's customers purchase as an expensive, desperate link to their places of origin -- "places that now exist only in their hearts" (4). The other poems, also very strong, link together the stories and essays by distilling images and reinforcing themes, almost as if the book itself were a musical and the poems were its songs. Of them all, my favorites were "How to Get a Baby," which uses folklore to explain the sexual "naivete" that outsiders might see in young Puerto Rican woman, and "The Medium's Burden," the last poem in the collection, which sees Ortiz Cofer (like so many others before her) lamenting that being a poet means carrying the weight of everyone else's problems and secrets on her own shoulders.
The prose pieces that appear in the first half of the book are mostly stories about the women who in El Building. These stories are connected not only by their setting, but also by the reappearance of characters (the bookish girl, the mistress, etc.) and the attention they bring to the injustices faced by Puerto Ricans living through one of the most tumultuous decades in United States history. In "American History," the school-aged protagonist develops a crush on the smart white boy who lives in a house on the same block, and she makes a date to study with him the same afternoon that JFK is assassinated. For older Puerto Ricans, the death of the first Catholic president means the postponement of their own dreams of enfranchisement. For our young protagonist, having the door slammed in her face by her crush's mother signals a similar kind of death or postponement. It is a reminder that despite her intelligence and her crush's apparent interest there are prejudices and other social barriers still impeding the attainment of her goals. In similar fashion, the other stories reveal the patriarchy, poverty, and other social forces that prevent these women from becoming full members of US society.
In the book's second half, Ortiz Cofer turns from short fiction to personal essay, filling in some of the blanks from Silent Dancing with new stories about her failed romance with a Jewish boy, being beat up by an African American girl, finding refuge in the public library, and so forth. This section contains two essays that are frequently anthologized, "The Story of My Body" and "The Myth of the Latin Woman: I Just Met a Girl Named María," which offer a creative, occasionally funny entry into how the author felt herself being pigeon-holed into identity categories like the Easy Latina and the Latina Maid. While I think the whole book is worth reading for enjoyment and literary merit (I don't give five stars away easily), I believe these two pieces should be required reading for everybody. Seriously, do not be fooled by this title's brevity and lack of fame (relative to, say, The House on Mango Street). It is a wallop of a book and an essential classic of late twentieth-century literature.
The poem at the start of the collection, "The Latin Deli: An Ars Poetica," is one of the author's best known works and in my opinion is stronger, more complex, and more memorable than any of the poems that appeared in her previous multigenre collection, Silent Dancing (1990). From the perspective of the woman who scans groceries at the little local store, the poem introduces topics like homesickness, nostalgia, and consumerism that unite the book's other contents. It refers to particular products, like the yellow Café Bustelo can, that the store's customers purchase as an expensive, desperate link to their places of origin -- "places that now exist only in their hearts" (4). The other poems, also very strong, link together the stories and essays by distilling images and reinforcing themes, almost as if the book itself were a musical and the poems were its songs. Of them all, my favorites were "How to Get a Baby," which uses folklore to explain the sexual "naivete" that outsiders might see in young Puerto Rican woman, and "The Medium's Burden," the last poem in the collection, which sees Ortiz Cofer (like so many others before her) lamenting that being a poet means carrying the weight of everyone else's problems and secrets on her own shoulders.
The prose pieces that appear in the first half of the book are mostly stories about the women who in El Building. These stories are connected not only by their setting, but also by the reappearance of characters (the bookish girl, the mistress, etc.) and the attention they bring to the injustices faced by Puerto Ricans living through one of the most tumultuous decades in United States history. In "American History," the school-aged protagonist develops a crush on the smart white boy who lives in a house on the same block, and she makes a date to study with him the same afternoon that JFK is assassinated. For older Puerto Ricans, the death of the first Catholic president means the postponement of their own dreams of enfranchisement. For our young protagonist, having the door slammed in her face by her crush's mother signals a similar kind of death or postponement. It is a reminder that despite her intelligence and her crush's apparent interest there are prejudices and other social barriers still impeding the attainment of her goals. In similar fashion, the other stories reveal the patriarchy, poverty, and other social forces that prevent these women from becoming full members of US society.
In the book's second half, Ortiz Cofer turns from short fiction to personal essay, filling in some of the blanks from Silent Dancing with new stories about her failed romance with a Jewish boy, being beat up by an African American girl, finding refuge in the public library, and so forth. This section contains two essays that are frequently anthologized, "The Story of My Body" and "The Myth of the Latin Woman: I Just Met a Girl Named María," which offer a creative, occasionally funny entry into how the author felt herself being pigeon-holed into identity categories like the Easy Latina and the Latina Maid. While I think the whole book is worth reading for enjoyment and literary merit (I don't give five stars away easily), I believe these two pieces should be required reading for everybody. Seriously, do not be fooled by this title's brevity and lack of fame (relative to, say, The House on Mango Street). It is a wallop of a book and an essential classic of late twentieth-century literature.
Displaying 1 - 22 of 22 reviews