Racial discrimination, abortion, welfare... Diana Garcia has peeled away the bandages and is talking about these gritty subjects to her students at CSU-Monterey Bay. And she has clout, because she has lived every one of them.

Born in a labor camp in the San Joaquin Valley, she authored "When Living was a Labor Camp," given the American Book Award. Her visions include the poem, "Cotton Rows, Cotton Blankets":

"... braced by youth and lengths of summer breeze

... backs to the sun, bandanas tied

to shade our brows, hands laced with tiny cuts..."

Surprisingly, she says, "As a child it was idyllic. There was a sense of constant companionships and a swirl of family and friends and culture in the camp."

In fourth grade she was tested, dubbed gifted, and bussed to the right side of the tracks along with students who were branded mentally retarded. In fact, they simply didn't speak English.

At the end of the hallway those students turned left for their class. She turned right, a seeming metaphor for her life, and is mad about the injustice of it still.

The associate professor lives on campus now and attributes her masters of the arts in poetry to mastery of the English language. Then there was her college professor, Glover Davis. "He said I wrote the (worst) poetry but the best short stories."

He later introduced her at her MFA graduate reading.

Garcia's sun-drenched desk adjoins the desk of Frances Adler, who founded the remarkable Creative Writing and Social Action Program that has given voice to students' most secret and sacred experiences. Garcia's side of the room, packed with volumes of poetry, is vibrant with the same primary colors she wears.

Bursting with smiles, the 54-year-old grandmother says, "I worked really hard to get where I am. I'm very proud of my age."

Q: When did you find your passion?

A: When he (Davis) suggested I change my degree to writing it was so out of my realm of experience. I put professors on pedestals. They were superhuman people. But I took his advice and never looked back. I read works of wonderful Latina women and realized that I was part of that voice. I knew then I'd found my passion.

Q: Describe a day and night in the labor camp.

A: You hear the alarm clock go off and mariachi music. One radio station played one song, a sweep of violins and flutes trilling, and I hated that song. It was 5 a.m. and everybody had to get ready, especially the men. If it was horrible weather, it would be brutal for them... In high school I earned extra money working in the fields.

Q: When did you burn with shame?

A: When I almost flunked out of first grade because I couldn't speak English well enough. Mother had to take me back to school and demonstrate that I could read in English. From that point on, my parents never let us speak Spanish at home again. I never felt ashamed of being Mexican or how hard my parents had to work. But whenever I've encountered racism I've felt deep resentment and anger and I lash out.

Q: How did you break your own silence?

A: My own silences revolve around getting pregnant at 19, being unwed and being on welfare. Talk about shame and embarrassment: when I went into the welfare office to renew my application they made me feel like dirt -- devalued and unwanted and like a stain on American culture. It was such a horrendous experience that writing about that was very important for me... Probably the biggest silence I had to fret over was having an abortion at 25 because I didn't want to become a single mother of two children... So many young girls who had illegal abortions have stayed silent and hidden and are marginalized about it as being unclean and dirty women. I'm damned if I'm gonna stay silent about it! If I help empower one student to break the silence, it's worth breaking mine.

Q: Do your students decry our patriarchal society or do they think women's lib is a funky retro thing?

A: I think it's somewhere in the middle. We do a lot of teaching around gender issues on this campus, especially this division. Perhaps as freshmen they don't have enough life experience and haven't done enough reading to realize the glass ceiling still exists. By the time they're juniors and seniors, with all the courses they've taken, they've begun to get a glimmering of what may await them when they go into the world... Much of what we've accomplished over the last 40 years is just beginning to bear fruit. The fact that we didn't get the vote until the '20s, maybe it takes 40 to 50 years until it's ingrained in the culture's psyche... I think in the next four to five years we'll see more women becoming visible.

Q: Are today's youth more honest? Or do we grow out of it?

A: We're so much more idealistic when we're young and see the world as a perfect place. It's only when we encounter its imperfections and learn we're part of that imperfect world that we consider treating people with delicacy and fairness.

Q: What can you do with a social action major?

A: The major is in Humanities and Communication. One of our graduates landed a $60,000-a-year job in the Silicon Valley because of all the skills she brought to the table: she can write, be verbally articulate, work with others and communicate. Other students are working in editing and publishing at McGraw Hill.

Q: How do you lighten up, chill, relax?

A: I'm a TV junkie. I love to watch anything about law.

Q: What is still hard to talk about?

A: When I see young people lacking heart and soul it troubles me. It feels so brutal that students can be so young and insensitive. My major dilemma is how to talk about issues that can trouble all of us, in a way that invites discussion rather than turns off some of the audience.

Q: Are battle lines being drawn about gay marriage?

A: Yes... Some of the very privileged students are impatient with talk of these matters. I remain hopeful that if enough people with a voice, like teachers and politicians and business leaders, keep speaking the truth about what it means to lack power and privilege in any society, a trickle will get into those people whose ears and eyes are closed.

Q: Has spell check made everyone a good writer?

A: Oh, heavens no! It helps but doesn't make up for learning the roots of words, etc. (A student passes by and after an embrace Garcia says, "Have you got that poem yet?" The girl says it's forthcoming.)

Q: What about poetry speaks to your gristle?

A: I love that I have permission to dream over a poem and develop a precise word and image; and even as I read it, years later, I can still recapture the moment.

Q: So, poetry is a kind of memory marker?

A: Yes, when years later you can read it and remember just that moment. I can't say enough times how I feel so blessed to come into writing. It's like a world opened to me. I got to crack the egg open and step inside.