Soledad Chavez-Plumley

Soledad is a teacher and writer of poetry and short stories. As a teacher she has used the written word to help her students in a North Philadelphia bilingual school develop an understanding of their cultural, educational, and social realities. After one year of teaching in a school where Latinos were the minority, she made a conscious decision to return to North Philadelphia to work with Latino young people. She felt she would have a greater impact with young people who could relate to her and to whom she could share the importance of being Latino and why the culture and history must be respected and passed down through generations. Her work reminds people in the Latino community of the importance of holding on to their culture and language as they live in the US. Her writing focuses on the experiences of Latino immigrants, providing her own life as an example, and the right for immigrants to be accepted and respected. As a Columbian immigrant living in the US for the past 30 years, Soledad put her experiences and teachings into her Spanish-language book Del Welfare a la Buena Vida. Soledad believes her art does not simply belong to her, but to her community, the people who relate to her experiences. For Soledad, social change happens when women are empowered. This is the focus of her next book in which she highlights the experiences of 25 Latino women like herself in Latinas Contra Toda Adversidad.