Norma Elia Cantú
Professor of English, University of Texas at San Antonio
Living and Writing on the Border:
A Chicana Autobioethnography
6:00 pm reception, followed by lecture at 6:30 pm, then book signing following lecture.
DeGolyer Library, Southern Methodist University
Through images and words, Norma Elia Cantú takes her audience on a trip back in time to the 1950s and 60s . Her lyrical prose underscores the familial, cultural, and political world of the border between Mexico and the United States. The title of her book, Canicula refers to the "dog days" of summer, but it also functions as a metaphor for an "in-between" between childhood and adulthood, a time of becoming and of negotiating dual identities.
Norma E. Cantú currently serves as Professor of English at the University of Texas at San Antonio. She received her Ph.D. from the University of Nebraska--Lincoln. She is the editor of a book series, Rio Grande/Rio Bravo: Borderlands Culture and Tradition, at Texas A&M University Press. She is a member of the Board of Trustees of the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress. Author of the award-winning Canícula Snapshots of a Girlhood en la Frontera, and co-editor of Chicana Traditions: Continuity and Change, she is has just finished a novel, Caba?uelas and is currently working on another novel tentatively titled: Champú, or Hair Matters. and an ethnography of the Matachines de la Santa Cruz, a religious dance drama from Laredo, Texas.