Jennifer Ellspermann

"Why am I compelled to write?... I write because I'm scared of writing, but I'm more scared of not writing.”
-Gloria Anzaldúa

Jennifer Ellspermann is a senior English major with minors in Chicana/o Studies and Communications. She has been on the editorial staff for Criterion for four years and is a development associate for The Truth AboutThe Fact, an International Journal of Literary Nonfiction. She is the President of Sigma Tau Delta (the International English Honors Society) and a member of the Academic Community of Excellence, Delta Epsilon Iota, and Lambda Pi Eta Honor societies. She currently works at First Year Experience at LMU, where she has learned the important skills of life. She is currently writing her first fictive novel that addresses male masculinity for Chicano men, specifically within Inglewood, California. After graduation, she hopes to continue her education by obtaining her MFA in Fiction.

My project focuses on Angela De Hoyos because of the contributions she has made as a Chicana poet within the creative field of writing. Through different forms of literary techniques, she demonstrates her passionate views against the social, political, and economic alienation that Chicanas/os experience within the United States. Her poetry captures the plight of the Chicanos in a vivid manner, through her use of imagery and incorporation of both Spanish and English within her writing. I admire De Hoyos because she experienced a traumatizing event (severe burns from a gas heater), yet continued to prevail with her passion of writing and pursuing her interests through educational endeavors. She is an aspiring Chicana writer who has provided a voice for Chicanos during the Chicano Movement. Her work is bold, provocative, and inspiring for all ethnic groups that experience social, political, and economical exploitation.