Judy A. Lucero (pen name, #21918) was a Chicana prisoner poet, cited as a legend among Latina feminists.
[1] Lucero had a particularly tough life, becoming a heroin addict after being introduced to drugs at the age of eleven by one of her stepfathers, losing two children and dying in prison at the age of 28 from a brain hemorrhage.
[2][3][4] Lucero's poems were published in 1973 in De Colores Journal, Memoriam: Poems of Judy Lucero after her death.
[5][6] In her poem "I Speak an Illusion" she "articulates the contradictions of her Chicana experience while lamenting the apparently unbreakable bonds that incarcerate her.
"[7] Juan Gómez-Quiñones and Irene Vásquez highlight her work as advocating women's strength, such as in "Jail-Life Walk" which they refer to as "simply gripping".