Lindsey Hannah & Chaisty Joiner
Professor Sanders-Senu
English 2132
19 November
Gloria Anzaldua
Early Life: Born on September 26, 1942.
She was born in South Texas Rio Grande Valley.
Gloria Anzaldua’s parents had been farm workers; during her youth she lived with a ranch, worked in the grounds and became intimately alert to the Southwest and Southern region Texas landscapes.
Anzaldúa began menstruating when she was only three years old, a symptom of the endocrine condition that caused her to stop growing physically at the age of twelve.
When she was 14, her father died in a car accident.
Despite these circumstances, she was determined to get an education.
Career: In 1969, Anzaldúa received her B.A. in English, Art and Secondary Education from Pan American University.
She also earned her M.A. in English and Education from the University of Texas.
As a teacher, she taught a variety of students.
She first taught at a bilingual preschool and then at a school for mentally and emotionally handicapped students.
She then worked to educate college students about feminism, Chicago studies and creative writing at a number of universities including the University of Texas at Austin, Vermont College of Norwich and San Francisco University.
Major 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
Interviews/Entrevistas (2000)
This Bridge We Call Home: Radical Visions for Transformation (2002)
The Gloria Anzaldúa Reader
Prietita Has a Friend (1991)
Friends from the Other Side/Amigos del Otro Lado (1995)
Prietita y La Llorona (1996)
La Fea (1958)
Major Awards: Before Columbus Foundation American Book Award (1986) - This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color.
Lambda Lesbian Small Book Press Award (1991)
Lesbian Rights Award (1991)
Sappho Award of Distinction (1992)
National Endowment for the Arts Fiction Award (1991)
American Studies Association Lifetime Achievement Award (Bode-Pearson Prize - 2001)
Additionally, her work 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 2012, she was listed as one of the 31 LGBT history "icons" by the organisers of LGBT History Month.
Death: Anzaldúa died on May 15, 2004, at her home in Santa Cruz, California, from complications due to diabetes.
Themes: Gloria Anzaldua was a passionate observer of art in addition to spirituality and brought these types of influences to her writings at the same time.
With that being said, she used poetry in Borderlands/La Frontera echo her years of feminist imagined and her non-linear, experimental manner of appearance.
Her writings blend styles, cultures and languages, weaving together poetry, theory, autobiology and experimental narritives.
Additional Information: Anzaldúa was a descendant of many of the prominent Basque and Spanish explorers and settlers to come to the Americas in the 16th and 17th centuries.
The household in which the author grew up is almost a stereotypical chicano family, whereby male figure was the authoritarian head, whilst the female, the mother, was stuck in all the biases of this paradigm.
Anzaldúa was a very spiritual person and stated that she experienced four out-of-body experiences during her lifetime:
1. Her early menstruation at two or three years old as a result of dying and a different spirit entering her body.
2. Drowning "for a little while" at around eight years of age while swimming in South Padre Island.
3. Dying for around two minutes after falling down a hill and breaking her back.
4. Dying for twenty minutes during her hysterectomy.
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 for spiritual reasons.
Bibliography
Anzaldúa, Gloria E., 2003. "La Conciencia de la Mestiza: Towards a New Consciousness", pp. 179–87, in Carole R. McCann and Seung-Kyung Kim (eds), Feminist Theory Reader: Local and Global Perspectives,
New York: Routledge Keating, AnaLouise, and Gloria Gonzalez-Lopez, eds. Bridging: How Gloria Anzaldua's Life and Work Transformed Our Own (University of Texas Press; 2011), 276 pp.
Mack-Canty, Colleen. "Third-Wave Feminism and the Need to Reweave the Nature/Culture Duality" pp. 154–79, in NWSA Journal, Fall 2004, Vol. 16, Issue 3.
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; January/February 2005, Vol. 12, Issue 1.
Ward, Thomas. "Gloria Anzaldúa y la lucha fronteriza", in Resistencia cultural: La nación en el ensayo de las Américas, Lima, 2004, pp. 336–42.