Carmen Tafolla

Called a “world class writer” by Alex Haley, Carmen Tafolla is widely recognized as one of the madrinas of contemporary Chicana literature.  Born in San Antonio, Tafolla’s poems employ the bilingual idiom of the city’s westside barrios. She has long been regarded as one of the masters of bilingual code-switching in her fiction and poetry. Curandera (1983) is considered something of a core document in this regard.  Tafolla is one of the most often anthologized Chicana writers in the country, and her dramatic talents have made her lively presentations highly sought after. 

    In the 1970s, Tafolla was the head writer for “Sonrisas,” a pioneering bilingual television show for children. Many of Tafolla’s stories for children have since been published as illustrated books by Scott Foresman, Houghton Mifflin, Celebration Press, and others. Her bilingual environmental story for children, Baby Coyote and the Old Woman / El coyotito y la viejita, was published by Wings Press in 2000. 

    A scholar of note, Tafolla is the author of To Split a Human: Mitos, Machos y la Mujer Chicana (1983). Tafolla received her Ph.D. in Bilingual Education from the University of Texas at Austin in 1982.  She has been an Associate Professor and/or visiting professor of Women’s Studies, Mexican American Studies, literature, and education at California State University Fresno, Northern Arizona University and other institutions throughout the Southwest. She has been a freelance educational consultant on bilingual education, writing and creativity, and cultural diversity issues for over two decades.

    Tafolla is the author of Sonnets to Human Beings and Other Selected Works, which includes not only the title selection (recipient of the 1987 National Chicano Literature Prize from the University of California at Irvine), but a large selection of Tafolla’s poems and short stories, as well as many essays on Tafolla and her work.  Originally published in 1992 by Lalo Press and (in German) by the University of Osnabrück, Sonnets to Human Beings and Other Selected Works was reissued by McGraw-Hill in 1995 and (as a limited edition) by Wings Press in 1999.

    Tafolla lives in San Antonio, Texas, where she is currently working on a novel, an autobiography, and a biographical work on labor leader Emma Tenayuca. She was a founder of Camino, an innovative dual-language school for gifted and creative students.