Roberta Fernández

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Roberta Fernández
OccupationNovelist
NationalityUS
Period1990–
Genrecomposite novel, short story cycle
Notable worksIntaglio: A Novel in Six Stories
Notable awardsMulticultural Publisher's Exchange, Best Fiction (1991)
Texas Institute of Letters
Books-aj.svg aj ashton 01.svg Literature portal

Roberta Fernández is a Tejana novelist, scholar, critic and arts advocate. She is known for her novel Intaglio, and for her work editing several award-winning women writers. She was a professor in Romance Languages & Literatures and Women's Studies at the University of Georgia.[1]

Biography[]

Early life and education[]

Fernández is a fifth-generation tejana from Laredo, Texas. She earned her B.A. and an M.A. degrees at the University of Texas at Austin, and her PhD in Romance Languages & Literatures from the University of California, Berkeley. Her dissertation, "Towards a Contextualization of José Carlos Mariátegui’s Concept of Literary and Cultural Nationalism,"[1] examined the role of José Carlos Mariátegui in the early 20th century Peruvian cultural wars.

Fernandez held a post-doctoral fellowship at the Center for Mexican American Studies at UT, Austin; she received a Rockefeller Fellowship from the Womanist Consortium of the Institute of African American Studies at UGA to study Chicana literary feminism and nationalism.[1] She received a second Rockefeller Fellowship from the CRIM [Centro Regional de Investigacion Multidisciplinarias], a research center in Cuernavaca associated with the National University of Mexico.[citation needed] The seminar topic for 2005 was "The Empowerment of Women." Her own topic dealt with "The Role Played by Community-Based Organizations in the Transculturation Process & Empowerment of Mexican Women Recently Arrived in Georgia."[citation needed]

Art advocacy[]

[1]

  • Assistant to the Director, Mexican Museum in San Francisco
  • Director, Bilingual Arts Program, Oakland Unified School District
  • Founder, Prisma: A Multicultural, Multilingual Women's Literary Review (1979–1982) at Mills College
  • Directed two major conferences: "The Cultural Roots of Chicana Literature, 1780-1980" (Mills College and Aztlán Cultural, 1981; see here for photo of the exhibit's poster) and "Latinos in the United States: Cultural Roots and Diversity" (Brown University and Casa Puerto Rico, 1985).

Editorial and curatorial work[]

[1]

  • Editor, Arte Público Press, from 1990–1994. Several of the writers whose manuscripts she edited received national awards for these works.
  • Curator, "Twenty-Five Years of Hispanic Literature of the United States, 1965-1990" (traveling exhibit), sponsored by the Texas Humanities Resource Center.

Published works[]

  • Intaglio: A Novel in Six Stories (1990)
  • Fronterizas: Una novela en seis cuentos (the author's own re-write into Spanish of Intaglio) (2002)
  • In Other Words: Literature by Latinas of the United States, ed. (1994; anthology)[2]
  • Fiesta, Fe y Cultura: Religious Celebrations of the Mexican Community of Detroit, [Roberta Fernandez, Spanish editor and translator], Laurie Sommers, ed. (1995)
  • Twenty-five Years of Hispanic Literature in the United States, (a catalogue of a library exhibit of the same name) at the Main Library of the U of Houston, 2 November 1992 – 14 January 1993).
  • Some of her short fiction and essays have appeared in Riding Low in the Streets of Gold, Judith Ortiz Cofer, ed.; Herencia: The Anthology of Hispanic Literature of the United States, Nicolas Kanellos, ed.; American 24-Karet Gold: Classic American Short Stories, Yvonne Colliud Sisko, ed.; Breve: Actualite de la Nouvelle (Paris), Martine Couderc, ed. & trans.; Barrios and Borderlands: Cultures of Latinos and Latinas in the United States, Denis Lynn Daly Heyck, ed.; Mascaras: Latina Writers on Their Own Work, Lucha Corpi, ed.; The Stories We Have Kept Secret, Carol Bruchac, ed.;The Massachusetts Review (Spring 1983); Cuentos: Stories by Latinas, Gomez, Moraga, Romo-Carmona, eds., and many more national and international publications.
  • Some of her scholarly articles have appeared in as The Routledge Companion to Latino/a Literature, Frances Aparicio & Suzanne Bost, eds. (2012); The Flannery O'Connor Review (Fall, 2009); Encyclopedia of Ethnic American Literature, Emmanuel Nelson, gen. ed. (2006); 'Abriendo Caminos in the Brotherland: Chicana Feminism in El Grito ' in Chicana Leadership: The Frontier Reader, Sue Armitage et. al, eds. (2002); 'La presencia de Jose Carlos Mariategui en el Repertorio Americano (Costa Rica, 1919-1959)' in Revista de Linguística y Filología de la Universidad de Costa Rica; Reconstructing American Literature, Paul Lauter (ed.); Women’s Studies and in other publications.

Literary criticism on Intaglio: A Novel in Six Stories[]

  • Akins, Adrienne Viola. "'Each of Us Tell It As We See It': Memory and Story-Telling in Roberta Fernandez's Intaglio" Critique: Studies in Contemporary Fiction. 2010: 52 (1): 30–40.
  • Gómez-Vega, Ibis. "La mujer como artista en Intaglio." The Bilingual Review, 1993 Jan-April, 18 (1): 14–22.
  • Jameson, Misty L. "Roberta Fernandez’s Intaglio as Short Story Cycle." Lecture presented at the Aqui y Ahora Symposium on Latina/o Literature at the University of Georgia (Athens), November, 2001.
  • Kelly, Margot. "A Minor Revolution: Chicano/a Composite Novels and the Limits of Genre." Ethnicity and the American Short Story (Wellesley Studies in Critical Theory, Literary History and Culture). Julia Brown, Ed. New York: Routledge, 1997: 63–84.
  • McCracken, Ellen. In chapter on "Remapping Religious Space" in New Latina Narrative: The Feminine Space of Post-Modern Ethnicity. Tucson: U of Arizona Press, 1999.
  • Muthyala, John Sermanth. "Roberta Fernández’s Intaglio: Border Crossings and Mestiza Feminism in the Border-Lands." Canadian Review of American Studies/Revue Canadienne d’Etudes Américaines, 2000:30 (1); 92-110. (PDF On-line)
  • Muthyala, John Sermanth. Reworlding America: Myth, History and Narrative. Athens: Ohio University Press, 2006. [Chapter 4 is on Intaglio and on Leslie Marmon Silko's Almanac of the Dead.]

Awards for creative writing[]

  • Three-time DeWitt Wallace/Reader's Digest/MacDowell Fellow while a resident at the MacDowell Colony
  • Multicultural Publisher's Exchange award, Best Fiction (1991), Intaglio: A Novel in Six Stories
  • Inducted into the Texas Institute of Letters (1991)
  • [Finalist for the Schweitzer Fellowship in Creative Writing at SUNY Albany—Toni Morrison, judge, 1987]
  • [Finalist for the D.H. Lawrence Fellowship at the U of New Mexico, 1986]
  • [Finalist for the Dobie/Paisano Fellowship of the Graduate School at the U of Texas in Austin, 1983]

Scholarly awards[]

[3]

  • [Scholar-in-Residence (by invitation of the Athens-Clarke County Public Library): led five book discussions on Latino/a literature at four public libraries in Georgia through a pilot program sponsored by the National Endowment for the Humanities and the American Library Association, Oct 2001-June 2002]
  • [Faculty Research Grant, Center for Humanities and Arts, University of Georgia, Spring, 2001]

See also[]

References[]

  1. ^ Jump up to: a b c d e Arte Público Press bio page, accessed 9 March 2008
  2. ^ Roberta Fernández (1994). In Other Words: Literature by Latinas of the United States. Arte Publico Press. ISBN 9781611921823.
  3. ^ UGA Institute for Women's Studies Newsletter(accessed March 2008) Archived 14 March 2008 at the Wayback Machine

Notes/Further reading[]

  • Gómez-Vega, Ibis. "La mujer como artista en Intaglio." The Bilingual Review/La Revista Bilingue, 1993 Jan-Apr; 18 (1): 14–22.
  • Kelley, Margot. "A Minor Revolution: Chicano/a Composite Novels and the Limits of Genre." Ethnicity and the American Short Story. Ed. Julia Brown. New York, NY: Garland; 1997. pp. 63–84.
  • Muthyala, John Sumanth. "Roberta Fernández's Intaglio: Border Crossings and Mestiza Feminism in the Borderlands." Canadian Review of American Studies/Revue Canadienne d'Etudes Américaines, 2000; 30 (1): 92-110. (PDF online)

External links[]

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