Gloria Anzaldúa

(1942-2004)

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Annotated Bibliography

Anzaldúa, Gloria. Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza. San Francisco: Spinsters/Aunt

Lute Book Company, 1987. Anzaldúa concentrates on the physical, psychological, sexual, and spiritual borderlands caused by race, class, and sexuality. Her discussion also focuses on the new mestiza, the Chicano. She uses a mix of English, Castillian Spanish, North American dialect, Tex-Mex, and Nahuatl (Aztec) to illustrate the new mestiza and its language. Society must accept this new culture, this borderland mix. It is a new identity.

Anzaldúa, Gloria, ed. Making Face, Making Soul/Haciendo Caras: Creative and Critical

Perspective by Feminists of Color. San Francisco: Aunt Lute Books, 1990. This is one of Anzaldúa's compilations of works by feminists of color, which range from essays to poems and letters. The discourse is split into seven sections, in which the texts focus on how women of color are affected by racism, how they combat racism and sexism, how they decolonize themselves, how they "give tongue," intellectual women of color, how they work together, and the critical theories regarding "intellectual space" (xvii). A prominent focus is because of how mujeres de color have had to hacer caras (make faces) and how they construct an identity or hacer alma.

Garcia, Alma M. "The Development of Chicana Feminist Discourse, 1970-1980." Gender and Society 3.2 (June 1989): 217-238.

In this essay Garcia covers the development and progress of the Chicana feminist movement, which began in the late seventies shortly after the rise of the national Chicano movement in sixties. She addresses the discourse on the influences and interrelationship of racism, capitalism, and patriarchy on the general Chicana experience. This text provides an excellent background to the Chicana feminist movement and thought. It also helps establish for the readership a sense of the Chicana identity by the relationship of race, class, and gender.

Kay, Susan Ann. "Feminist Ideology, Race, and Political Participation: A Second Look." The Western Political Quarterly 38.3 (September 1985): 476-484.

Moya, Paula M. L. "Chicana Feminism and Postmodernist Theory." Signs. 26.2 (2001): 441-

483. In this article Moya discusses the implications and problems of the postmodernist approach to the Chicana and Chicano studies. She argues that the postmodernist theory affects a form of "identity crisis" for Chicanas. Instead she maintains that a realist approach would be more effective definition of Chicana. It would not be a "figure of contradiction or oppositionality," but rather allow the Chicana to be "part of a believable and progressive social theory" (480). The text considers two theories for forming the Chicana identity and the reader is able to see how the Chicana perceives herself and how that perception can change.