Gloria Anzaldúa

Abstract

Texas-born, Chicana activist Gloria Evangelina Anzaldúa (b. 1942–d. 2004) lived and wrote in provocation of borders, not only the geographic lines between the United States and Mexico but also those defining race, religion, gender, and sexuality. This theoretical posture and innovative and generative writing across both genres (essay, poetry, prose, picture book) and nation mark her as a key player in transnational and postcolonial feminism. Anzaldúa’s writing on embodiment, about her life as a lesbian and as a type I diabetic, have become key texts in queer theory and disability studies. Anzaldúa wrote in the linguistic nexus of Spanish and English, frequently code-switching throughout her writings in ways that called in future generations of bilingual readers. In Borderlands theory, a topic that evolves across several of her works most notably Borderlands/La Frontera, Anzaldúa refers frequently to the Nahautl word nepantla as representative of her lived experiences “in-between.” A word in circulation by the 16th century as seen in the Florentine Codex, nepantla engages with the experience of colonization and the dynamism of identity, both erasures and recoveries. Anzaldúa’s formative experiences with racial discrimination, land dispossession, and educational institutions sharply inflected her body of written work and interviews. She and her family worked as migrant farmers on the various ranches on Jesús Maria, and later in West Texas. She maintained a persistent but fraught relationship to educational institutions, actively seeking advanced degrees while negotiating with financial precarity and intellectual marginalization. Throughout graduate studies, Anzaldúa worked as an educator, from Pre-K through high school to university settings. In 1974, Anzaldúa began her work on a PhD in literature at the University of Texas at Austin while engaged with a variety of political groups, including MEChA (Movimiento Estudiantil Chicanx de Aztlán), farm worker protests, and feminist consciousness-raising groups. These intellectual and political engagements led her to publish her groundbreaking anthology of women-of color, This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color, with Chicana writer and activist Cherríe Moraga. In 1988 Anzaldúa began the PhD program in literature at the University of California, Santa Cruz, but prioritized the demands of her professional life as a writer and speaker, returning to her dissertation again in 2001 and publishing her anthology, this bridge we call home: radical visions for transformation. Gloria Anzaldúa died in May 2004 due to diabetes-related complications. She was posthumously awarded her PhD by the University of California-Santa Cruz and in 2005 the Society for the Study of Gloria Anzaldúa (SSGA) was established at the University of Texas at San Antonio. This bibliography was supported by the invaluable assistance of Norma Elia Cantú and Ella Rose.