Marlene Dietrich, Rita Hayworth, & My Mother
Rita Maria Magdaleno. RitainAZ@aol.com

Camino del Sol Series  101 pp. / 6 1/8 x 9 / 2003

Paper (0-8165-2258-8) $15.95

Contact: Ann Wendland, Publicity Manager, 520-621-3920

Ability to Work with: At-Risk Students, Gifted Students, Senior Citizens

Language Proficiency: Spanish                                                                  

Home to Latinos are as diverse as our heritages. Under “Race” in a questionnaire, where is this “Year of the Latino Author” writer included? She calls herself a child of two cultures.

Rita Maria Magdaleno was born near Dachau in Augsbury, Germany, shortly after World War II to a German war bride mother and a Mexican American GI. (“She fell in love / with your wide smile / & thick black hair, / glint of a gold tooth / like a star or a broken / promise you still carry.”) Her family moved to Arizona in 1947, and Rita was raised with her father’s traditions. She grew up in south Phoenix, embraced by a large circle of familia, including seven tias who always liked her poems and stories. She believes that writing is an important way to connect with family and community. More than ever, she believes that writing is a tangible reminder of our roots and identity. “Poems and stories connect us to the communal heart,” she says.

This memoir in poetry, recalling Magdaleno’s return to the land of her birth, is an intertwining of personal and public history bridging continents and cultures, war and peace, in search of family secrets. Her poems recall a mother “Marlene Dietrich pretty, / her smoky voice / & those wide Aryan / eyes that promised / never to lie.” A war bride who named her child after a Hollywood movie star even before casting eyes on America. A caring woman who made her daughter realize that “it is always the small gestures which make us human.”

Magdaleno’s poems also recall the horror of the war from an unusual perspective. Reflecting on an uncle in the Gestapo and on nearby victims of Nazi atrocities, they offer a new, intimate view of the Holocaust—and of today’s reunified Germany—and show that the consequences of events played out half a century ago continue to resonate with the children of that era.

For Rita Magdaleno, healing involves reclaiming the difficult emotions associated with history as she progresses from elegy to reconciliation. With patience, courage, and abiding love, she turns to mother and to Motherland to show us that this healing comes in many forms.

Rita Maria Magdaleno received her M.A. in English and American Literature at the University of Texas at El Paso.  She has served as Visiting Writer and Lecturer in Chicano Poetry at the University of Augsburg in 1995 and 2002, and as Visiting Writer at the University of Bamberg, Germany, in 1995 and 2002.

She teaches as a poet in the schools for the Arizona Commission on the Arts and teaches autobiographical writing at the U of A Extended University, Writing Works Center. April 1999, she was awarded an International Artist’s Exchange and conducted children’s writing workshops for the Union of Community Museums, Oaxaca, Mexico. Magdaleno has received a Fiction Fellowship from the Arizona Commission on the Arts. She has been a Writing Fellow at Millay Colony for the Arts (New York), The Ucross Foundation (Wyoming), and the Vermont Studio Center.

She learned the craft of writing as a graduate student at the University of Texas at El Paso. Also, she continues to learn about writing through her work as instructor for the Writing Works Center, U of A Extended University–where she teaches journal writing, memoir, & photo-narrative writing–and her work with children through ArtsReach in Tucson.

She connects deeply with students who are exploring their identity, a sense of self in the world. Her students write family stories, photo-narratives, self-portraits, and “name poems.” She works especially well with middle and high school students–ESL, Bilingual, and incarcerated youth.

Her recent poetry appears in Floricanto, Si! A Collection of Latina Poetry (Penguin USA), and Fever Dreams: Contemporary Arizona Poetry (University of Arizona).

“A striking collection of poetry, one that rewards repeated readings. . . . With lyrical language and a fearless heart, Magdaleno probes her (and our) past, and we are the wiser for it. This book complicates our views of ethnicity, of cultural identity, of our nation’s history.” —John Bradley

“I am moved by the reach, the pitch and intensity of Magdaleno’s poetics. . . . A welcome set of new directions.” —Juan Felipe Herrera

“Rita Magdaleno—of ‘mixed blood’ that her SS uncle ‘would have spilled without hesitation’—writes narratives and lyrics of integrity, honesty and tenderness, where the personal, historical and political are seamlessly engaged. This is a poetry of passion, compassion, astounding imagery and riveting emotional courage.” —Laure-Anne Bosselaar

Rita Maria Magdaleno