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Great Lives from History: Latinos

Norma Elia Cantú

by Macey M. Freudensprung

Mexican-born writer and educator

Cantú is a postmodernist writer and a professor. Her published poetry, essays, short stories, and novels focus on Latino and Chicano studies, as well as border studies and folklore.

Areas of achievement: Literature; poetry; education

Early Life

Norma Elia Cantú (cahn-TEW) was born in Nuevo Laredo, Mexico, in 1947, the oldest of eleven children born to Florentino Cantú Vargas and Virginia Ramón Becerra Cantú, She was raised in Laredo, Texas, where she attended public schools. She began writing poetry when she was seven, and since the age of thirteen she has included her stories and other written works in a journal. After graduating high school, eighteen-year-old Cantú enrolled at Laredo Junior College, from which she graduated with her associate’s degree in 1970. She received a Rotary International Scholarship that paid for her community college tuition. Cantú continued her education at Laredo State University (now Texas A&M International University at Laredo), from which she graduated cum laude with a bachelor’s degree in English and political science in 1973. She then transferred to Texas A&M University at Kingsville, where she worked as a teaching assistant for two years before she graduated with honors and received her master’s degree in English, with a minor in political science, in 1976.

Cantú then enrolled in the doctoral program at the University of Nebraska at Lincoln. During this time, she was awarded a Ford Foundation Graduate Fellowship (1977-1979), a Fulbright-Hays Research Fellowship that enabled her to travel to Spain (1979-1980), and a Ford Foundation Chicano Dissertation Completion Grant (1982). Cantú received her Ph.D. in English in 1982. While she was in school, Cantú focused on a variety of research interests, including Chicano literature, border studies, folklore, women’s studies, and U.S. Latino studies. Cantú’s dissertation was on The Offering and the Offerers: A Generic Illocation of a Laredo Pastorela in the Tradition of the Shepherds’ Plays.

Life’s Work

In 1980, Cantú became an assistant professor at Laredo State University, teaching courses on Chicano literature, creative writing, and women’s studies. In 1985, she received a second Fulbright-Hays fellowship that enabled her to return to Spain for postdoctoral research. Two years later, she was promoted to associate professor at Laredo State/Texas A&M International University, a position she held until 1993, when she became a full professor . In addition to teaching, she was chair of the university’s division of arts and sciences from 1987 to 1991 and interim dean of the school of education and arts and sciences from 1991 to 1992.

In 1993, Cantú served as a senior arts specialist at the National Endowment for the Arts’ (NEA) Folk and Traditional Arts Program. In this position, she reviewed and advised on grant applications. During the 1998-1999 academic year, Cantú was the acting director for the Center for Chicano Studies at the University of California at Santa Barbara.

In 2000, Cantú accepted a position as a full professor in the English department at the University of Texas at San Antonio, where she directed the English doctoral program. Her teaching interests included cultural studies, contemporary literary theory, border studies, Chicano and Latino literature and film, folklore, and women’s studies.

At the same time she was teaching, Cantú pursued her literary interests, publishing poems, short stories, and excerpts from her novel. Her first significant fiction publication was her novel Canícula: Snapshots of a Girlhood en la Frontera (1995), which by 2011 was in its fifth printing. Canícula, the Spanish word for “dog days,” is a fictionalized memoir about a Mexican American family living in the border city of Laredo from the 1940’s until the early 1960’s. This novel won the 1995 Premio Aztlán Award, and the Spanish version, Canícula: Imágenes de una niñez fronteriza, was published in 2000. By 2011, Cantú had finished her second novel, Cabañuelas, and she was working on another novel, Champú: Or, Hair Matters. She is also the author of numerous journal articles, essays, and book chapters.

In addition, Cantú has edited Flor y Ciencia: Chicanas in Science, Mathematics, and Engineering (2006), Paths to Discovery: Autobiographies from Chicanas with Careers in Science, Mathematics, and Engineering (2008), and Moctezuma’s Table: Rolando Briseño’s Mexican and Chicano Tablescapes (2010). In 2001, she was a coeditor with the Latina Feminist Group of the anthology Telling to Live: Latina Feminist Testimonies, which included two of her poems and two of her essays. The following year, she and Olga Nájera Ramírez coedited Chicana Traditions: Continuity and Change; and the two women, along with Brenda M. Romero, coedited Dancing Across Borders: Danzas y Bailes Mexicanos (2009). In 2010, she and Marie E. Fránquiz coedited Inside the Latin Experience: A Latin Studies Reader.

Cantú has been an active member of many organizations and committees, including the Texas Committee on Higher Education (1987), Modern Language Association (MLA) Commission on the Languages and Literatures of America (1987-1989), Texas Committee for the Humanities (1987-1993), American Association of University Women (1990-1992), and Council for Women in Higher Education (1991). She was the faculty representative on the Formula Funding Committee of the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board (1992-1993), and she served on the editorial board of the MLA Commission on the Literatures and Languages of America (1992-1994). She also chaired the National Association of Chicana and Chicano Studies (2003-2004), was a member of the board of Humanities Texas (2004-2007), and was an NEA panel review member (2005-2008).

Significance

Norma Elia Cantú is the recipient of numerous honors, including induction into the Laredo Women’s Hall of Fame (1995), Outstanding Alumni Award, Laredo Community College (2001), American Folklore Society Distinguished Scholar Award from the Division on Chicana and Chicano Literature (2003), and the National Association of Chicana and Chicano Studies Scholar of the Year (2008). Her work as a professor, writer, and folklorist has done much to advance the understanding of Latino life, literature, and culture, particularly the border culture of south Texas.

Further Reading

1 

Cantú, Norma Elia. Canícula: Snapshots of a Girlhood en la Frontera. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1995. A novel in which Cantú addresses her family on both sides of the border in a recollection of memories from her upbringing.

2 

_______. “Mexican Citizen.” In Art at Our Doorstep: San Antonio Writers and Artists, edited by Nan Cuba and Riley Robinson. San Antonio, Tex.: Trinity University Press, 2008. A compilation of works by various authors and artists that includes one of Cantú’s essays, as well as a brief biography.

3 

_______, ed. Paths to Discovery: Autobiographies from Chicanas with Careers in Science, Mathematics, and Engineering. Los Angeles: UCLA Chicano Studies Research Center, 2008. Includes a preface written by Cantú that provides an understanding of her thinking.

Citation Types

Type
Format
MLA 9th
Freudensprung, Macey M. "Norma Elia Cantú." Great Lives from History: Latinos, edited by Carmen Tafolla & Martha P. Cotera, Salem Press, 2012. Salem Online, online.salempress.com/articleDetails.do?articleName=GLL_10013240011881001.
APA 7th
Freudensprung, M. M. (2012). Norma Elia Cantú. In C. Tafolla & M. P. Cotera (Eds.), Great Lives from History: Latinos. Salem Press. online.salempress.com.
CMOS 17th
Freudensprung, Macey M. "Norma Elia Cantú." Edited by Carmen Tafolla & Martha P. Cotera. Great Lives from History: Latinos. Hackensack: Salem Press, 2012. Accessed October 22, 2025. online.salempress.com.