Quote by Judith Ortiz Cofer: “Language is the only homeland.”

For exiles and diaspora communities, the physical homeland may be lost or unreachable. But the language you carry — the words, phrases, idioms, and rhythms of where you come from — goes everywhere with you. Language is the portable home that cannot be taken by a border or a government.

Cofer published Silent Dancing in 1990, during a decade of intense debate in the United States about bilingual education, immigration, and what it meant to be American. Puerto Ricans occupied a paradoxical position — American citizens who were treated as foreigners — and questions of language were inseparable from questions of belonging.

Puerto Rican American writer and educator whose memoir and poetry explored the experience of growing up between Puerto Rican and American cultures in New Jersey. Her memoir Silent Dancing and poetry collection Terms of Survival are central works in Nuyorican and Latina literary traditions.