Gloria Evangelina Anzaldúa (September 26, 1942 - May 15, 2004) was a Chicana lesbian feminist writer, poet, scholar and activist. Anzaldúa was born in the Rio Grande Valley of south Texas on September 26, 1942 to Urbano and Amalia Anzaldúa. At 11, her family relocated to Hargill, Texas. Despite the racism, sexism, and other forms of oppression she experienced growing up as a sixth-generation tejana and the death of her father when she was 14, Anzaldúa succeeded in getting a college education. She received her B.A. from Pan American University, and her M.A. from University of Texas at Austin.
As an adult, she worked for a few years as a schoolteacher before going to Austin to study for her M.A. After receiving her degree, she relocated to California where she supported herself through her writing, lectures, and occasional teaching stints at the University of California, Santa Cruz, Atlantic Florida University, and elsewhere. She is most famous for coediting This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color (1981) with Cherrie Moraga, editing Making Face, Making Soul/Haciendo Caras: Creative and Critical Perspectives by Women of Color (1990), and coediting This Bridge We Call Home: Radical Visions for Transformation (2002). She also wrote Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza (1987). Her children’s books include Prietita Has a Friend (1991), Friends from the Other Side - Amigos del Otro Lado (1993), and Prietita y La Llorona (1996). She has also authored many fictional and poetic works. Her works weave English and Spanish together as one language, an idea stemming from her position in the "borderlands", a position of multiple identities. Her autobiographical essay, "La prieta," was published in (mostly) English in This Bridge Called My Back, and in (mostly) Spanish in Esta puente, mi espalda: Voces de mujeres tercermundistas en los Estados Unidos).
Her works and activism have received critical acclaim. This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color won the Before Columbus Foundation American Book Award in 1986. Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza was recognized as one of the 38 best books of 1987 by Library Journal and 100 Best Books of the Century by both Hungry Mind Review and Utne Reader. In 1991, Anzaldúa won a National Endowment for the Arts award for fiction and the 1991 Lesbian Rights Award. In 1992, she was awarded the Sappho Award of Distinction. She has also been awarded the Lambda Lesbian Small Book Press Award and the American Studies Association Lifetime Achievement Award.
She has made exceptional contributions to expanding the definitions of "feminism" as well as contributing to the field of cultural theory/chicana and queer theory. One such contribution is through her introduction to United States academic audiences of the term mestizaje, meaning a state of being beyond binary ("either-or")conception, into academic writing and discussion. In her theoretical works, Anzaldúa calls for a “new mestiza,” which she describes as an individual aware of her conflicting and meshing identities and uses these “new angles of vision” to challenge binary thinking in the Western world. The “new mestiza” way of thinking is illustrated in postcolonial feminism.
While race normally divides people, Anzaldúa called for people of different races to confront their fears in order to move forward into a world that is less hateful and more useful. In "La Conciencia de la Mestiza: Towards a New Consciousness," a text often used in women’s studies courses, Anzaldúa insisted that separatism invoked by Chicanos/Chicanas is not furthering the cause, but instead keeping the same racial division in place. Many of Anzaldúa’s works challenge the status quo of the movements in which she was involved. She challenged these movements in an effort to make real change happen to the world, rather than to specific groups.
Anzaldúa was a very spiritual person whose grandmother was a curandera (traditional healer). In many of her works she refers to her devotion to la Virgen de Guadalupe (Our Lady of Guadalupe), Nahuatl/Toltec divinities, and to the Yoruba orishás Yemayá and Oshún. In her later writings, she developed the concepts of spiritual activism and nepantleras to describe the ways contemporary social actors can combine spirituality with politics to enact revolutionary change.
She died on May 15, 2004 at her home in Santa Cruz, California from complications due to diabetes. She was within weeks of completing her dissertation and receiving her doctorate from the University of California, Santa Cruz.
Works
- This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color(1981)
- Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza(1987)
- Making Face, Making Soul/Haciendo Caras: Creative and Critical Perspectives by Feminists of Color(1990)
Interviews/Entrevistas (2000)
- This Bridge We Call Home: Radical Visions for Transformation(2002)
Children's books
Quotations
Why am I compelled to write? Because the writing saves me from this complacency I fear. Because I have no choice. Because I must keep the spirit of my revolt and myself alive. Because the world I create in the writing compensates for what the real world does not give me. By writing I put order in the world, give it a handle so I can grasp it.
- "Speaking in Tongues: A Letter to Third World Women Writers," This Bridge Called My Back
At some point, on our way to a new consciousness, we will have to leave the opposite bank, the split between the two mortal combatants somehow healed so that we are on both shores at once and, at once, see through serpent and eagle eyes. Or perhaps we will decide to disengage from the dominant culture, write it off all together as a lost cause, and cross the border into a wholly new and separate territory. Or we might go another route. The possibilities are numerous once we decide to act and not react.
- "La Conciencia de la Mestiza: Towards a New Consciousness"
Awards
- Before Columbus Foundation American Book Award
- Lambda Lesbian Small Book Press Award
- Lesbian Rights Award
- Sappho Award of Distinction
- National Endowment for the Arts Fiction Award
- American Studies Association Lifetime Achievement Award
References
- Anzaldúa, Gloria E., 2003. "La Conciencia de la Mestiza: Towards a New Consciousness", pp. 179-187 in Feminist Thought Reader: Local and Global Perspectives. Eds. Carole R. McCann and Seung-Kyung Kim. Routledge: New York.
Keating, AnaLouise, ed. EntreMundos/AmongWorlds: New Perspectives on Gloria Anzaldúa. New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2005. Keating, AnaLouise. Women Reading, Women Writing: Self-Invention in Paula Gunn Allen, Gloria Anzaldúa and Audre Lorde. Philadelphia: Temple UP, 1996.
- Mack-Canty, Colleen. “Third-Wave Feminism and the Need to Reweave the Nature/Culture Duality” pp. 154-179 in NWSA Journal; Fall 2004, Vol. 16, Issue 3.
- Pérez, Emma. “Gloria Anzaldúa: La Gran Nueva Mestiza Theorist, Writer, Activist-Scholar” pp. 1-10in NWSA Journal; Summer 2005, Vol. 17, Issue 2.
- Reuman, Ann E. “Coming Into Play: An Interview with Gloria Anzaldua” p. 3 in MELUS; Summer 2000, Vol. 25, Issue 2.
- Stone, Martha E. “Gloria Anzaldúa” pp. 1, 9 in Gay & Lesbian Review Worldwide; Jan/Feb2005, Vol. 12, Issue 1.