Living Writers Series – Spring 2025

Insight, Writings: Third World and Other Imaginaries

Maria E. Ramirez is a woman of Chicana, Puerto Rican, and Apache ancestry. She was actively involved in the student movement in the late sixties, where students, along with their parents, marched and demanded that their community be part of all the higher education systems, which at the time were overwhelmingly white. She became deeply involved with the Los Siete organization in San Francisco due to the awareness she gained in the Vacaville prison project at UCB. She left UCB to devote herself full-time to be in solidarity with all the diverse communities in San Francisco. In 1972, she became one of the first Chicanas to visit the People’s Republic of China through the Chinese Friendship Association. Eventually, returning to her home in Union City, still guided by social and Earth Justice movements, she went on to get her master’s and has now served as a community college counselor for over 25 years and developed her own one-woman storytelling show, Chicana Herstory. She continues to be involved in her community against gentrification and environmental pollution and is co-founder of Families United for Equity, which advocates for the developmental disabled community.

About the Living Writers Series
The Living Writers Series (LWS) is a live reading series organized especially for the Creative Writing Program community at UCSC. There is a new series each quarter, and each series features writers with unique voices. The LWS is open to all creative writing students and the public.

Sponsored by the Porter Hitchcock Poetry Fund, the Laurie Sain Endowment, the Humanities Institute, The Literature Department, Creative Writing Program, and the Center for Racial Justice.