Yreina Cervántez was born on December 5th, 1952, in Garden City, Kansas. She lived with her mother, father, and younger brother until she was seven. Cervántez remembers that at a very young age, she became aware that things were different for people of color. Fortunately, her parents provided Cervántez with a strong support system that helped her articulate the confusion and alienation she felt growing up in a racist environment. She grew up watching them support the development of the Civil Rights Movement, empathizing with the African American community in their town. Her parents instilled a sense of social justice that would later become central in her art. 

In Kansas, Cervántez experienced first hand the after-effects of the landmark case Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka. Due to changes in school zoning, she attended three different schools in Kansas. She recalled being one of the few students of color, in one school. Despite the ruling against segregation in schools, Cervántez stated that the mentality of most had not changed, and racism remained prevalent in her childhood hometown. She recalls being chased home from school every day. In one particular instance, a childhood friend turned to her and said, “No Mexicans Allowed,” asking for her to leave. 

Once Cervántez turned seven, she and her family moved to California, first to Santa Anna, then Escondido and finally settling in Mount Palomar, where her father worked as a laborer at a turkey ranch from 1963 to 1968. Cervántez’s family moved into a small one-bedroom trailer, which later was remodeled to include two makeshift wooden rooms. In her time in Mount Palomar, she interacted with a diverse group of students in school, which included Native American children, Mexican immigrants, and White children. Cervántez viewed school as a place of possibility, but it was also a place of institutional racism where she felt not enough attention was devoted to students of color. In her first two years of high school at Fallbrook, Cervántez received no guidance from her counselor and encountered the same stratification she experienced in her elementary and middle school years. She remembers having to take an hour and a half long bus ride every morning to get to school. Due to the poor living conditions they endured in the small trailer and other personal reasons, the family chose to relocate to Orange County during Cervántez’s sophomore year of high school. 

Upon arrival to Orange County, Cervantez attended Westminster High School in Westminster, California, which is where she became politicized. In her junior year of high school, she, along with a group of students started the school’s first United Mexican American Students (U.M.A.S.), later renamed Movimiento Estudiantil Chicanx de Aztlán (MEChA), with the help of the school librarian. Cervántez became an officer along with her high school friend Gloria Cuevas. Both convinced their sponsor to take them to the National Chicano Moratorium Committee in March 1970 as part of a school field trip. When Cervántez arrived at the march, she remembers feeling amazed at “seeing so many brown people at one place.” She had the opportunity to listen to the speeches from a number of Chicano and Chicana activists, including Rosalio Muñoz before the Los Angeles Police Department became involved. Cervántez was one of the first to witness the first wave of police officers begin to forcefully subdue the crowd. She evaded arrest and avoided being tear-gassed by running away from the commotion. Cervántez recalls being impacted by the violence her community faced at the hands of the L.A.P.D. Cervántez was politicized by the event in her transition from Westminster to the University of California Santa Cruz, where she met others like her who attended the march. 

In 1970, Cervántez started attending the University of California Santa Cruz as an art student. She received financial support through a four-year California Opportunity Grant. She became immersed in the Civil Rights Movement and became a member of the university’s first Third World Coalition. Further politicized by her involvement in the group, she attempted to grapple with political themes in her art. She incorporated text in her work to bring attention to issues that were important to her, such as the treatment of undocumented Central American immigrants. However, professors disapproved of her use of text, claiming that it transformed her art into propaganda, but their comments did not deter her from bringing up political issues in her art. Later, when she encountered the work of Käthe Kollwitz, she became inspired to create self-portraits. Cervántez felt hesitation at first because she questioned whether her self-portraits were relevant to the movement. Despite her hesitation, she continued to generate self-portraits. In the process of creating self-portraits, she began to make sense of the second-wave feminism phrase, “the personal is political.” She realized that through self-portrait, she could expand the representation of brown women in art. Since then, Cervántez has made sense of her agency by continuing to create women-centered art. 

Cervántez graduated from the University of California Santa Cruz in 1975. She later became the artist in residence at El Centro de La Raza in Long Beach, California, where she helped women with no resources through the program La Nueva Chicana: Homegirl Productions, while continuing to work on her art. After gaining recognition for her piece "Homenaje a Frida Kahlo" in 1978, she became the artist in residence at Self-Help Graphics. In her time with Self-Help Graphics, she saw the beginnings of their Atelier Program. She also worked alongside Gloria Alvarez, Frances Salomé España, Marialice Jacob, Norma Alicia Pino, and Kay Torres in creating ¡Alerta!, a multi-media installation piece that addressed the topics of immigration, the undocumented and Central American refugees. In support of those affected by the Central Americans Crisis, Cervántez became a part of a Chicano Delegation, put together by the University of California, Los Angeles, and traveled to Managua, Nicaragua. In Managua, intending to build a bridge between two groups, she helped create a mural that merged the Chicano Movement with the Nicaraguan Revolution. After a summer in Nicaragua, Cervántez decided to pursue a Master's in Fine Art.

In 1968, after being rejected and later waitlisted, Cervántez was finally accepted to a graduate program at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) as a print-making student. Cervántez first discovered print-making in her time at the University of California Santa Cruz and honed her skills through her work in the community. In her oral history, Cervántez recalls feeling depressed from the lack of representation in her department at UCLA. Many of her professors misunderstood her work, failing to provide Cervántez with the proper support for artistic growth. As an artist working within the community, she had gained hands-on experience and empowerment, but going to UCLA, made her feel invalidated. Cervántez felt the constant need to justify her work. For her Master’s thesis, she proposed the creation of a mural to her committee. Despite their initial reluctance, Cervántez was able to receive funding from SPARC’s Neighborhood Pride Mural Program to complete her mural in 1989. She created “La Ofrenda” as a dedication to the common struggles of Latinx communities. In the mural, she depicted the transformative change of women by using an image of Dolores Huerta as her focus. She incorporated text in her mural using a couple stanzas of Gloria Enedina Alvarez’s poem “Vende Futuro” and the entire poem “Mujer” by Sara Martinez, also known as Rosanna Perez. In addition to working with these two poets, she also worked with Chicana/o and Central American youth assistants and several local graffiti artists. Cervántez prided herself on the diversity of her crew. Upon the completion of the mural, she received her Master’s in Fine Arts in 1989. 

After receiving her Master’s, Cervántez struggled to find a full-time position. For over ten years, she consistently held multiple positions; workshop facilitator throughout Los Angeles museums, an educator at UC Irvine, and UC Berkeley. Finally, in 2003 Cervántez received a call from California State University, Northridge’s (CSUN) Department of Chicano Studies, offering her a full-time professor position. Becoming faculty at CSUN provided Cervántez and her family financial stability. Currently, she is still teaching at CSUN and continues to support the next generation of Chicana/o artists.