The gulf in life between that which is desired and that which is real is the predominant theme in the poetry of Lorna Dee Cervantes. Culture and locale play a primary role in her poetry collection, which presents a young woman in the process of coming of age. By dealing with the inner and outer conflicts in the Chicano world amid the greater American context, the poet as narrator finds resolutions for herself through the act of writing. In an unpublished 1986 interview she fully identifies with her narrator: "My color and my class are intermingled in my poetry," she says, "I don't have a psychological separation from who I am because materially there is no separation."

Lorna Dee Cervantes was born 6 August 1954 in the Mission District of San Francisco, California, into what she described in an unpublished 1982 interview as the "welfare class." Her maternal Mexican ancestors intermarried with...