ESTELA PORTILLO TRAMBLEY

Written by Teresa Palomo Acosta
Read by Laurie Gallardo

Produced by KUT for Texas Women's History Month in cooperation with the Ruthe Winegarten Memorial Foundation for Texas Women's History. First broadcast on Austin radio station KUT in March, 2011.

Resources

Ruíz, Vicki and Virginia Sánchez Korrol. Latinas in the United States, A Historical Encyclopedia, Vol. 1. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2006.

http://www.enotes.com/twentieth-century-criticism/trambley-estela-portillo.

http://www.feministpress.org/books/estela-portillo-trambley

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Estela Portillo Trambley was a late twentieth century playwright and writer who became one of the first female Mexican American writers to achieve a national reputation. She drew inspiration from the people and experiences of her native El Paso: the play Puente Negro (Black Bridge), one of her best known, focuses on immigration, a continuing national issue. Just as importantly, she created works with a feminist voice, in which women challenge the subordinate roles to which many are consigned. In Day of the Swallows, a play for which she won the Quinto Sol Award in 1972, the leading character rebuffs marriage and eventually enters a lesbian relationship. In other works, Portillo Trambley’s female characters emerge as strong persons who learn to live independent lives regardless of societal condemnation.

Other well-known plays are Sor Juana and Blacklight, a story of cultural identity struggles, which won second place in the Hispanic playwright’s competition at the 1985 New York Shakespeare Festival. She was also a founder of the first Hispanic theater in El Paso, Los Pobres.

In addition to writing drama, Portillo Trambley produced a short story collection, Rain of Scorpions in 1975, and her novel, Trini, appeared in 1986. She also wrote poetry and essays.

Estela Portillo Trambley combined writing with a career teaching high school English. In 1995, she held the Presidential Chair in Creative Writing at the University of California, Davis. She died in 1999 at age 63.