"Golden Glass"

Podcast performance by Hailey Garber, Aly Blumhagen, and Harrison Garber

Alma Luz Villanueva is an American poet who was born in Lompoc, California on October 4, 1944. Villanueva’s writing reflects of Chicano, Mexican American, Native American, and Yaqui ethnicities. She is known for her personal tone and unifying line of thought, illustrated through her poems, narratives, and plays. Villanueva writes to expose her readers to her belief of the nature of women, contrasting the alienated modern world based on masculine principles. This feministic perspective was revolutionary for Chicano literature. However, Villanueva did not grow up with this fame, she wrote to her readers saying, “Although I deal with suffering, injustice, and human weakness, my final impression is always that of the joy of life and of confidence in a larger, almost scared, scheme of things”. Growing up, Villanueva never knew her German father and was solely raised by her Mexican mother and grandfather. Villanueva was inspired by her grandfather, due to his college degree in philosophy, works of poetry, and job editing the Hermosillo, a Mexico newspaper. In addition, Villanueva was exposed to writing at any early age because her mother worked for creative writing programs at many universities in California, including the University of California Santa Cruz, Cabrillo College, Stanford University, and numerous others. Villanueva’s work includes: Soft Chaos, Luna’s California Poppies, Vida Poetry, Desire, Weeping Woman: La Llorona and Other Stories, Naked Ladies, Planet with Mother, May I?, The Ultraviolet Sky, Life Span, and Blood Root. Many of these books received awards, such as, the American Book Award for her novel The Ultraviolet Sky in 1989, PEN Oakland Fiction Award for the novel Naked Ladies in 1994, the Latin American Book Award for her poem “word up”, and the Chicano/Latino Prize in 1976 and 1977.