Lourdes Perez
Professor Falknor
English 1301

“Latin Women Pray” Judith Ortiz Cofer is a Puerto Rican author whose work includes a range of literary categories such as poetry, short stories, autobiography, essays and young-adult fiction. She was born on February 24, 1952, moved to Paterson, New Jersey with her family in 1956. There she attended Butler High School. Cofer then attended Augusta College where she received a B.A. in English and later an M.A. in English from Florida, Atlantic University. In the poem, “Latin Women Pray” the author, Judith Ortiz Cofer makes it seem that the women’s prayers are pointless. The women realize that prayer could be pointless, but keeping hope alive (being bilingual) they can find a reason to keep their faith. It signifies the faithfulness and devotion of Latin women in church. In line three, Cofer mentions “They pray in Spanish to an Anglo God with a Jewish heritage.” Meaning that these women have to pray to a God that is not like them. She characterizes the women’s God as a “Great White Father” and not as a Spanish one. It may be a representation of the American culture. They don’t speak the same language, they don’t share the same culture, indicating that the women are worshipping a being unlike themselves. They pray to a God that doesn’t understand what they are saying. Despite those differences the women keep praying to him with hope that someday they might understand each other.
“Imperturbable in his marble pedestal looks down upon his brown daughters”, implies that even after all that praying these Latina women do, God sits calmly upon his pedestal and not impressed by all the prayers and candles lite up for him. He greets his women with a down look star. He is deaf to his followers from another culture. These women are blindly devoting themselves and praying to a God who is “unmoved by their persistent prayers”