Bettina Flores

Bettina Flores grimaces when she recalls her life as an 8-year-old. She is stooping alongside her widowed mother and six siblings in a field outside Fresno. She is picking grapes--for 2 1/2 cents a tray--and dreaming about living in an air-conditioned home, wearing pretty clothes, playing with a mountain of toys, jingling a pocketful of quarters she will use to buy candy. At 12, Flores moved a step closer to her dreams.

Bettina Flores, author of "Chiquita's Cocoon: the Latina Woman's Guide to Greater Power, Love, Money, Status and Happiness," has been called the Betty Friedan of the Hispanic world. Her progressive, "liberated Latina" book has been stirring the feminist soul of the Latina community since it was first published in 1990. Flores has proved herself to be a brilliant marketing person as well. After self-publishing the book in 1990, she managed to sell a hefty 20,000 copies, hawking the book wherever possible, from "baby showers to book conventions."

Bettina Flores, author of "Chiquita's Cocoon: the Latina Woman's Guide to Greater Power, Love, Money, Status and Happiness," has been called the Betty Friedan of the Hispanic world. Her progressive, "liberated Latina" book has been stirring the feminist soul of the Latina community since it was first published in 1990. Flores has proved herself to be a brilliant marketing person as well. After self-publishing the book in 1990, she managed to sell a hefty 20,000 copies, hawking the book wherever possible, from "baby showers to book conventions."

Bettina Flores was conditioned early on to believe that poverty was a virtue, that education was unimportant, that a man would provide for her. But from a very early age, she knew that she wanted out of her widowed mother's cocoon, an existence defined by poverty, a large family, the tenets of Catholicism and long dusty days of grape-picking in the Fresno area.

Bettina Flores was conditioned early on to believe that poverty was a virtue, that education was unimportant, that a man would provide for her. But from a very early age, she knew that she wanted out of her widowed mother's cocoon, an existence defined by poverty, a large family, the tenets of Catholicism and long dusty days of grape-picking in the Fresno area.

Bettina Flores grimaces when she recalls her life as an 8-year-old. She is stooping alongside her widowed mother and six siblings in a field outside Fresno. She is picking grapes--for 2 1/2 cents a tray--and dreaming about living in an air-conditioned home, wearing pretty clothes, playing with a mountain of toys, jingling a pocketful of quarters she will use to buy candy. At 12, Flores moved a step closer to her dreams.