FINAL ESSAY

FINAL ESSAY
BIOGRAPHY OF DENISE CHAVEZ
By Michelle Villa
December 7, 2006









Denise Elia Chavez is a modern day literary figure. She was born August 15, 1948, in Las Cruces, New Mexico, in the home on La Colonia Street that her grandmother once owned. Her father’s name is Epifanio E. Chavez and her mother’s name was Delfina Rede. She has two sisters, Faride Conway and Margo Chavez. Denise’s dad was a lawyer and her mother was a school teacher. There was a big emphasis on education in the household. Her family is Roman Catholic, and Denise is a Democrat.

Denise’s mother and father divorced when she was only ten, so she had a strong female influence growing up. Her mother spoke flawless English and Spanish and expected the same of her children. It was this and the Mexican and American women who cooked, cleaned the house and helped raise Denise and her sisters that drew her into the “art of bilingualism” (???) She did only live forty miles from the Mexican border. She lived in the prime location, being so close to the border and having community involvement, to have the opportunity to value “conversations, prayers, tales, and legends” spoken in such a musical language(???). Another influence on Denise as she grew up was all the storytelling she heard as a child. The tradition of oral storytelling was of great influence to her. This is why she later refers to herself as a “performance writer”.

As a child, hearing all of these stories, and loving it, she did not aspire to be a writer. Although, she did keep a diary to keep the stories that she heard from family members while visiting them in west Texas in the summertime. She told a reporter from the Los Angeles Times once that it was “the untold stories were always the ones that, as kids, we found the most interesting.” She comments on the story about her one of her “uncles had only half an ear. The story was that he’d been in a terrible accident, but we knew there was more to it.” Even with this kind of start, Denise did not want to become a writer. Her childhood is full of story telling and book reading. Her grandmother was an avid book reader.

While working in a local hospital in her teenage years, Denise wanted to be an actress. While attending Madonna High School, an all girls Catholic school in Mesilla, New Mexico, she enrolled into a theater/drama class. She performed in drama plays and learned it was a way to “integrate the different aspects of her artistic inclinations” and of personal expression (???). It was here, in the drama department, where she really excelled, earning a scholarship award to New Mexico State University. She majored in drama and studied with Mark Medoff, the author of the play Children of a Lesser God. She wrote her first play, The Wait, while attending this university. Her first play won the New Mexico State University Best Play award. In 1971, she received her bachelor’s degree in