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Carmen Tafolla


Carmen Tafolla (born 29 July 1951) is an internationally acclaimedChicana writer from San Antonio, Texas, and a professor of Transformative Children's Literature at the University of Texas at San Antonio. Tafolla served as the poet laureate of San Antonio from 2012 to 2014, and was named the Poet Laureate of Texas for 2015-16. Tafolla has written more than twenty books, and won multiple literary awards. She is one of the most highly anthologized Chicana authors in the United States, with her work appearing in more than 40 anthologies.

Tafolla was born in San Antonio, Texas on 29 July 1951. She graduated from Austin College with a bachelor’s degree in Spanish and French in 1973, and earned a Master’s degree in Education from Austin College the following year. She pursued further post-graduate work at the University of Texas at Austin, earning a PhD in Bilingual and Foreign Education in 1981. Tafolla has two children, and is married to Ernest Bernal.

Tafolla served as the director of the Mexican-American studies center at Texas Lutheran College, Segun from 1973 to 1976, and from 1978 to 1979. She has been an associate professor of women’s studies at California State University, Fresno, and is currently an associate professor of education at the University of Texas at San Antonio.

Tafolla first drew the attention of the literary world as a poet, when she read some of her poetry at the Floricanto Festival in Austin, Texas in 1975. She published her first collection of poetry, Get Your Tortillas Together the following year. Tafolla's poetry is heavily influenced by her ethnic background, and often focuses on Chicana characters, or on themes and images which are important to Chicano culture. Critics such as Yolanda Broyles-Gonzales have noted that Tafolla's female characters often display great inner strength, exhibiting what Broyles-Gonzales refers to as "an indomitable will to endure and survive" even in the most adverse situations.


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