[3] Cota-Cárdenas attended Modesto Junior College and California State University, Stanislaus, where she received her Bachelor of Arts degree in 1966.
"Nostalgia," published in Siete Poetas in 1978 under Scorpion Press, is one of her more popular poems, inspired by her childhood experience of viewing a drive-in movie starring María Félix as a heroic nun.
As a girl, Cota-Cárdenas then enrolled in the Convent of Good Shepherd in New Mexico to become a nun and changed her mind shortly after, unsatisfied by the strict lifestyle and homesickness she experienced.
[2] I thought thenthat I would like to be a nun withlong white veil floating in the windmounting on horseback like the actress María Félixriding riding off intoa lovely cinema type sunsetin the Convent of the Good Shepherdwe ate dark cornflakeswheaties with coffee and not milk and thuspoor but pure we would get to beinstant nunsthe way I thought one could do everythinglike in the movies of the 1940sat the Motor-Vu.In 1985, Cota-Cárdenas published Puppet, her first extended fiction piece.
The novella fuses fiction and reality, as Cota-Cárdenas explores ideas about social issues, activism, and race, gender, and ethnicity during the Chicano movement.
In the story, Petra Levya, a Spanish professor, writes a novel in response to the death of Puppet, all while exploring her own values and identities through social and political lenses.
Cota-Cárdenas plays with language through her irregular grammatical choices, which reflect the narrator's internal conflicts and confusion, as well as her usage of humor and irony.
In Cota-Cárdenas' second novel, Sanctuaries of the Heart/Santuarios del corazón (2005), Petra Levya returns once more in a work that addresses social justice, the impact of culture on literature, and the complexities of Chicana consciousness.
"Chicano Nocture" includes the intersection between her Chicana identity and her innocence as a child, discussing her fear of "THE IMMIGRATION PATROL," as she writes, and its ability to suddenly cut family connections.