Gloria E. Anzaldúa

Gloria Evangelina Anzaldúa (September 26, 1942 - May 15, 2004) was a Mexican American lesbian feminist writer, poet, scholar and activist.

Biography
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, as well as the death of her father when she was fourteen, 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 obtain her M.A. and complete the course work for a degree in comparative literature at the University of Texas, Austin. In 1977 she moved to California where she supported herself through her writing, lectures, and occasional teaching stints at San Francisco State University; the University of California, Santa Cruz; Florida Atlantic University, and elsewhere. She is most famous for coediting This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color (1981) with Cherríe 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 have won several awards: 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 contributions to the definition of "feminism" and has contributed to the field of cultural theory/chicana and queer theory. One such contribution was 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.

Anzaldúa's published and unpublished manuscripts, among other archival resources, form part of the Benson Latin American Collection at the University of Texas at Austin. Anzaldúa also maintained a collection of figurines, masks, rattles, candles, and other ephemera used as altar (altares) objects at her home in Santa Cruz, California. These altares were an integral part of her spiritual life and creative process as a writer. The collection is presently housed by the Special Collections department of the University Library at the University of California, Santa Cruz.

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

Works

 * This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color (1981), New edition: Third Women Press, 2001, ISBN 0943219221
 * Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza(1987), ISBN 1879960125, Aunt Lute Books
 * Making Face, Making Soul/Haciendo Caras: Creative and Critical Perspectives by Feminists of Color, Aunt Lute Books (1990), ISBN 1879960109
 * Interviews/Entrevistas (2000), ISBN 0415925037
 * This Bridge We Call Home: Radical Visions for Transformation(2002), ISBN 0415936829

Children's books

 * Prietita Has a Friend (1991)
 * Friends from the Other Side -Amigos del Otro Lado (1995)
 * Prietita y La Llorona (1996)