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Diana Garcia is a native
of California's San Joaquin

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Valley.

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She was born in Camp
CPC, a farm labor

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camp owned by the California
Packing Corporation.

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At different times, she
has been a single mother

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on welfare, an
electronics retail store

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owner, a personnel manager,
and a sentencing consultant

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to criminal defense attorneys.

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She received her MFA from
San Diego State University

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and has taught at
Central Connecticut State

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University and University of
Freiburg in Freiburg, Germany.

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Garcia now teaches at California
State University, Monterey Bay,

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where she is acting director
of Creative Writing and Social

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Action program, and
where she coordinates

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the Reading, Writing,
and Critical Thinking

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program for the Institute
for Human Communication.

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Her poetry and
fiction are included

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in several anthologies, among
them Touching the Fire--

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Fifteen Poets of Today's
Latino Renaissance

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and Pieces of the Heart--

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New Chicano Fiction.

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Her collection of
poetry, When Living

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Was a Labor Camp, published
by the University of Arizona

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Press, was selected as an
American Book Award winner

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by the Before
Columbus Foundation.

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In the preface to her
book, Diana Garcia

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begins, "My poems begin at 5:00
in the morning, any weekday

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morning between
February and November

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in the middle of California's
San Joaquin Valley."

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She is a storyteller leading
us through the valley

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to the rich lives of the
characters, archetypes

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and intimates both,
who populate her poems.

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Garcia prods her
personal history

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and discovers the
beauty, the strength,

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and the resolve of Southern
California's migrant workers.

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She also uncovers
the indignities

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they suffer by way
of American policy--

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the Repatriation Act of the
1930s, Operation Wetback

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of the 1950s, more recently,
Propositions 187 and 227

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in California.

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Garcia's poetry also
takes on the intellectual.

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She invokes, for instance, the
French theorist Héléne Cixous

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and Gaston Bachelard.

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But even as these
philosophical underpinnings

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provide a powerful structure,
Garcia goes a step further.

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She covers her
intellectual brush strokes

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with approachable syntax and
resonant colloquial language.

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She leaves us with a
generous offering--

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the polish of her imagery
and the mastery of her music.

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Please welcome Diana Garcia.

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[APPLAUSE]

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