BERKELEY, Calif. (AP) – Michele Serros, a short story writer, essayist and poet whose wry and witty observations on growing up Mexican-American in Southern California became required reading in many ethnic studies courses, has died at age 48.
Serros’ husband, Antonio Magana, said she died Sunday at their home in Berkeley, California, after a 3½-year battle with a rare form of oral cancer.
Serros was a community college student when she burst on the literary scene in 1993 with the publication of “Chicana Falsa,” a collection of stories and poems inspired by her family life and childhood in the majority Hispanic coastal community of Oxnard.
She also published another autobiographical collection of fiction, “How to Be a Chicana Role Model,” and two young adult novels, “Honey Blonde Chica” and its sequel, “¡Scandalosa!”