Gloria Anzaldúa

American writer and scholar

• Born: September 26, 1942
• Birthplace: Jesus María of the Valley, Texas
• Died: May 15, 2004
• Place of death: Santa Cruz, California

Anzaldúa is best known as the founder of border theory, which explores the geographical, bodily, and emotional conflicts inherent in Chicano identity. Her works connect notions of indigenous mythology, the implications of language use among Spanish speakers in an English-dominant society, Chicana lesbian sexuality, and spiritual activism.

Early Life

Gloria Evangelina Anzaldúa (AHN-zahl-DOO-uh) was born in the Rio Grande Valley of south Texas to Urbano and Amalia Anzaldúa. The eldest of four children, Anzaldúa and her family spent time working on various ranches and farms as migrant workers throughout her adolescence. When Anzaldúa was eleven years old, her parents made the decision to relocate the family to Hargill, Texas, so the children would have the opportunity to attend school. In Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza (1987), Anzaldúa described the punishment inflicted by white teachers upon her and other Chicano students for speaking Spanish. The pain of those experiences resonated throughout her life.

In 1962, Anzaldúa graduated from Edinburgh High School and began taking courses at Texas Women’s University. Tuition proved to be too expensive, and she was forced to withdraw from school. Anzaldúa later earned her bachelor’s degree from the University of Texas-Pan American in 1969 and began teaching in primary and secondary schools. She had been a writer throughout high school and resumed her dedication to writing during this period. She earned a master’s degree in English and education from the University of Texas at Austin in 1972.

Anzaldúa later returned to the University of Texas in 1974 to work toward a doctoral degree in literature. She was involved as an activist in several groups while in Austin, but she ultimately felt unsupported by her doctoral department and made the decision to relocate to the San Francisco area to pursue her writing.

Life’s Work

Anzaldúa’s firsthand experiences with racism, sexism, classism, and heterosexism in south Texas influenced her autobiographical writings, poetry, and essays. While attending a writing retreat with other women and experiencing the elitisim and racism of other individuals present, Anzaldúa had the idea for the collection This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color (1981), which she coedited with Cherríe Moraga. This foundational feminist text offered a space for women of color to share their experiences and frustrations in the forms of poetry, essays, and theories.

After the publication of This Bridge Called My Back, Anzaldúa continued to write and eventually published her essays and poetry in Borderlands/La Frontera. This text is considered the basis for border theory. Within the text, Anzaldúa rejects a stable notion of identity for Chicanas because borders of space, mind, language, and body are constantly in flux. Chicanas, according to Anzaldúa, must constantly negotiate these shifting borders and address what it means to be mestiza, or individuals of mixed identity. This mestiza consciousness requires Chicanas to embrace all aspects of their identity, including the indigenous. Borderlands/La Frontera both critiques and examines Chicano culture on the grounds of sexism, heterosexism, and elitism related to language. Anzaldúa reclaims and reimagines the histories of various female figures relevant to Chicana mestiza identity because they have previously been subject to the accounts of patriarchal historians and storytellers. Indigenous Nahua female figures are important in Anzaldúa’s theory, so the forced mistress and translator to Hernán Cortés, Malintzín Tenepal, is no longer a traitor to the indigenous people; rather, she is the forgotten and abandoned mother of all mestizas. Mythological deities such as Coatlicue and Coyolxauhqui also are redeemed in Anzaldúa’s work. She reimagines the histories of La Llorona and La Virgen de Guadalupe. In Anzaldua’s text, these women are no longer subject to virgin/whore dichotomies or the monstrous historical interpretations previously offered by religious and historical patriarchs. Borderlands/La Frontera defies categorization because it contains elements of history, mythology, prose, poetry, and linguistics.

Anzaldúa began the Ph.D. program in literature at the University of California at Santa Cruz and in 1990 published the anthology Making Face, Making Soul/Haciendo Caras: Creative and Critical Perspectives by Feminists of Color. She also published two children’s books, Friends from the Other Side: Amigos del otro lado (1993) and Prietita and the Ghost Woman/Prietita y la llorona (1995). Along with AnaLouise Keating, Anzaldúa published Interviews/Entrevistas (2000), a collection of interviews with Anzaldúa conducted over the course of nearly twenty years. In a subsequent collaboration, Anzaldúa and Keating edited and published This Bridge We Call Home: Radical Visions for Transformation (2002). This anthology, released more than twenty years after the publication of This Bridge Called My Back, expands the earlier conversation to include the voices of men and women, as well as people of color and whites. The text expressed Anzaldúa’s growing concept of feminism that included transformation and activism grounded in work on public and individual levels.

While working on numerous projects, Anzaldúa continued to teach and work toward her doctoral degree; however, she did not live to receive it. She died on May 15, 2004, of complications from diabetes. The University of California at Santa Cruz posthumously awarded Anzaldúa her doctorate.

Significance

In Borderlands/La Frontera, Anzaldúa urges Chicanas to reject a singular approach to identity and instead work to interrogate and understand the various aspects inherent in a new mestiza consciousness: race, gender, sexuality, class, location, language, and history. Her work is the foundation for Border Theory and has fundamentally impacted queer, Chicana/o, and feminist studies. Her commitment to writing, collaborating, teaching, and public speaking, as well as her emphasis on spiritual activism, identity, and creativity are Anzaldúa’s legacy.

Bibliography

Anzaldúa, Gloria. The Gloria Anzaldúa Reader, edited by AnaLouise Keating. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2009. Released posthumously, Analouise Keating compiled and edited several works by Anzaldúa that were previously unpublished.

‗‗‗‗‗‗‗. “Now Let Us Shift.” In This Bridge We Call Home: Radical Visions of Transformation, edited by AnaLouise Keating and Gloria Anzaldúa. New York: Routeldge, 2002. One of the last works published by Anzaldúa before her death, this essay details her theory on the path to conocimiento, or deep knowledge. Individual work, according to Anzaldúa, will lead to transformation and spiritual activism.

Anzaldúa, Gloria, and AnaLouise Keating. Interviews/Entrevistas. New York: Routledge, 2000. A collection of interviews with Anzaldúa, each containing an introductory retrospective interview with Keating.

Pérez, Emma. “Gloria Anzaldúa: La Gran Nueva Mestiza Theorist, Writer, Activist, Scholar.” NWSA Journal 17, no. 2 (Summer, 2005): 1-10. Pérez analyzes the theories within Anzaldúa’s work.

Yarbro-Bejarano, Yvonne. “Gloria Anzaldúa’s Borderlands/La Frontera: Cultural Studies, 'Difference,’ and the Non-Unitary Subject.” Cultural Critique 28 (1994): 5-28. In this article, Yarbro-Bejarano examines Anzaldúa’s theory of mestiza consciousness, as well as the positive and negative responses to this work.