The Myth Of The Latin Woman Essay

What It’s Like Being a Woman in Literature

Female authors are often classified into their own genre in literature. Being a female author counts as a minority because as in many aspects of life, women lack support and interest from others. This is mainly because for such a long time women were uneducated and had low literacy rates so men were the ones to succeed in literature. Women tend to include their struggles and experiences with being a woman in their work. As for Judith Ortiz Cofer, she relates most of her literary works to the themes of identity and gender. Her experiences as a Latina writer shapes both her purpose and motivation in her work. She writes with her understanding of how the world sees her and how people see female authors.

Her strong feminine perspective in her work makes her the well-known writer she is. In her essay, “The Myth of the Latin Woman,” Ortiz Cofer goes through her experiences with stereotypes she has had to deal with in the past. She says “My personal goal in my public life is to try to replace the old pervasive stereotypes and myths about Latinas with a much more interesting set of realities” and that is what she strives to emphasize in her work (Ortiz Cofer 207). “The Myth of the Latin Woman” is an eye-opener to the exclusions not just Hispanics face but women as well. The difficulty with being a female writer, to Judith Ortiz Cofer was that she did not have the support from her peers as she wish she did. When one reads this essay they can feel the emotions that the author portrays through imagery and similes. In “The Myth of the Latin Woman,” the imagery was important because the speaker explains through descriptive words what it was like to be a Puerto Rican woman with words like “hopeless” and “vulgar” (Ortiz Cofer 204). This essay by Judith Ortiz Cofer revolves around prejudice and the belittling of females as people and their