Criticism > Nineteenth-Century Literary Criticism > Nineteenth-Century Women's Autobiography - Autobiographies By Women Of Color

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AUTOBIOGRAPHIES BY WOMEN OF COLOR

Genaro Padilla (essay date 1990)

SOURCE: "'Yo Sola Aprendi': Mexican Women's Personal Narratives from Nineteenth-Century California," in Revealing Lives: Autobiography, Biography, and Gender, edited by Susan Groag Bell and Marilyn Yalom, State University of New York Press, 1990, pp. 115-29.

[In the essay below, Padilla explores Mexican women's accounts of life in California before it became part of the United States.]

Desde muy niñta, ántes de venir de Mexico, me habían enseñado á leer…. Ya cuando era mujercita en California, yo sola aprendí á escribir, valiéndome para ello de los libros que veia—imitaba las letras en cualquier papel que lograba consequir—tales como cajillas de cigarros vacias, ú cualquier papel bianco que hallaba tirado. Así logré aprender bastante para hacerme entender por escrito cuando necesitaba algo.

(Lorenzana, p. 5)

[When I was...

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1. Introduction
2. Representative Works
3. Overviews
4. Autobiographies Concerned With Religious And Political Issues
5. Autobiographies By Women Of Color
6. Autobiographies By Women Pioneers
7. Autobiographies By Women Of Letters
8. Further Reading
9. Copyright

1. Autobiography