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    A Study Guide for Judith Ortiz Cofer's "My Father in the Navy"
    A Study Guide for Judith Ortiz Cofer's "My Father in the Navy"
    A Study Guide for Judith Ortiz Cofer's "My Father in the Navy"
    Ebook30 pages20 minutes

    A Study Guide for Judith Ortiz Cofer's "My Father in the Navy"

    By Gale and Cengage

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    About this ebook

    A Study Guide for Judith Ortiz Cofer's "My Father in the Navy," excerpted from Gale's acclaimed Poetry for Students. This concise study guide includes plot summary; character analysis; author biography; study questions; historical context; suggestions for further reading; and much more. For any literature project, trust Poetry for Students for all of your research needs.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherCengage Learning - Gale
    Release dateSep 28, 2016
    ISBN9781535829137
    A Study Guide for Judith Ortiz Cofer's "My Father in the Navy"

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      A Study Guide for Judith Ortiz Cofer's "My Father in the Navy" - Gale

      14

      My Father in the Navy

      Judith Ortiz Cofer

      1982

      Introduction

      Judith Ortiz Cofer's poem My Father in the Navy was first published as My Father in the Navy: A Childhood Memory in 1982, as featured in the second volume of Hispanics in the United States: An Anthology of Creative Literature. Since then, the poem has been published under its shorter title. It was reprinted in Ortiz Cofer's poetry collection Reaching for the Mainland in 1987 (part of Triple Crown: Chicano, Puerto Rican, and Cuban-American Poetry, a trilogy composed with Roberto Durán and Gustavo Pérez Firmat). My Father in the Navy is also found in Ortiz Cofer's 1990 autobiographical essay collection Silent Dancing: A Partial Remembrance of a Puerto Rican Childhood. The chapters of the book are separated by poems that reflect the chapters’ themes, and My Father in the Navy follows an essay about Ortiz Cofer's father, his service in the navy, and the author's Puerto Rican heritage.

      That last subject is the main theme in Ortiz Cofer's largely autobiographical body of work—which ranges from poems and short stories to novels, children's books, and essays— and My Father in the Navy indirectly addresses this theme. Ortiz Cofer spent her childhood in Paterson, New Jersey (near the shipyard where her father was stationed), and in Puerto Rico with her extended family. Her father's long absences as a serviceman in the US Navy are reflected in her poem. The speaker clearly sees her father as a figure who exists outside the family unit. Notably, Ortiz Cofer's father was light haired and fair skinned, but the rest of her family was not. He seems American to her, while they do not, and the distance explored in "My

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