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Interviews/Entrevistas
Gloria E. Anzaldúa, best known for her books Borderlands/La Frontera and This Bridge Called My Back , is one of the foremost feminist thinkers and activists of our time. As one of the first openly lesbian Chicana writers, Anzaldúa has played a major role in redefining queer, female, and Chicano/a identities, and in developing inclusionary movements for social justice.
In this memoir-like collection, Anzaldúa's powerful voice speaks clearly and passionately. She recounts her life, explains many aspects of her thought, and explores the intersections between her writings and postcolonial theory. Each selection deepens our understanding of an important cultural theorist's lifework. The interviews contain clear explanations of Anzaldúa's original concept of the Borderlands and mestizaje and her subsequent revisions of these ideas; her use of the term New Tribalism as a disruptive category that redefines previous ethnocentric forms of nationalism; and what Anzaldúa calls conocimientos -- alternate ways of knowing that synthesize reflection with action to create knowledge systems that challenge the status quo.
Highly personal and always rich in insight, these interviews, arranged and introduced by AnaLouise Keating, will not only serve as an accessible introduction to Anzaldúa's groundbreaking body of work, but will also be of significant interest to those already well-versed in her thinking. For readers engaged in postcoloniality, feminist theory, ethnic studies, or queer identity, Interviews/Entrevistas will be a key contemporary document.
In this memoir-like collection, Anzaldúa's powerful voice speaks clearly and passionately. She recounts her life, explains many aspects of her thought, and explores the intersections between her writings and postcolonial theory. Each selection deepens our understanding of an important cultural theorist's lifework. The interviews contain clear explanations of Anzaldúa's original concept of the Borderlands and mestizaje and her subsequent revisions of these ideas; her use of the term New Tribalism as a disruptive category that redefines previous ethnocentric forms of nationalism; and what Anzaldúa calls conocimientos -- alternate ways of knowing that synthesize reflection with action to create knowledge systems that challenge the status quo.
Highly personal and always rich in insight, these interviews, arranged and introduced by AnaLouise Keating, will not only serve as an accessible introduction to Anzaldúa's groundbreaking body of work, but will also be of significant interest to those already well-versed in her thinking. For readers engaged in postcoloniality, feminist theory, ethnic studies, or queer identity, Interviews/Entrevistas will be a key contemporary document.
322 pages, Paperback
First published May 1, 2000
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About the author
Gloria E. Anzaldúa
43 books782 followersGloria E. Anzaldúa was a scholar of Chicana cultural theory, feminist theory, and queer theory. She loosely based her best-known book, Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza, on her life growing up on the Mexican-Texas border and incorporated her lifelong feelings of social and cultural marginalization into her work.
When she was eleven, her family relocated to Hargill, Texas. Despite feeling discriminated against as a sixth-generation Tejana and as a female, and despite the death of her father from a car accident when she was fourteen, Anzaldúa still obtained her college education. In 1968, she received a B.A. in English, Art, and Secondary Education from Pan American University, and an M.A. in English and Education from the University of Texas at Austin. While in Austin, she joined politically active cultural poets and radical dramatists such as Ricardo Sanchez, and Hedwig Gorski.
After obtaining a Bachelor of Arts in English from the then Pan American University (now University of Texas-Pan American), Anzaldúa worked as a preschool and special education teacher. In 1977, she moved to California, where she supported herself through her writing, lectures, and occasional teaching stints about feminism, Chicano studies, and creative writing at San Francisco State University, the University of California, Santa Cruz, and Florida Atlantic University, among other universities.
(from Wikipedia)
See also: https://tshaonline.org/handbook/onlin...
When she was eleven, her family relocated to Hargill, Texas. Despite feeling discriminated against as a sixth-generation Tejana and as a female, and despite the death of her father from a car accident when she was fourteen, Anzaldúa still obtained her college education. In 1968, she received a B.A. in English, Art, and Secondary Education from Pan American University, and an M.A. in English and Education from the University of Texas at Austin. While in Austin, she joined politically active cultural poets and radical dramatists such as Ricardo Sanchez, and Hedwig Gorski.
After obtaining a Bachelor of Arts in English from the then Pan American University (now University of Texas-Pan American), Anzaldúa worked as a preschool and special education teacher. In 1977, she moved to California, where she supported herself through her writing, lectures, and occasional teaching stints about feminism, Chicano studies, and creative writing at San Francisco State University, the University of California, Santa Cruz, and Florida Atlantic University, among other universities.
(from Wikipedia)
See also: https://tshaonline.org/handbook/onlin...
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
April 16, 2009
I will never forget the powerful and painful stories. I suspect I will come back to re-read this book more than once...
March 19, 2018
Anzaldúa is an amazing person, a person who has so clearly tapped into el cenote, the sinkhole into subterranean springs, and conducts the flows of those depths upwards to her readers and interlocutors. This book is fascinating for those who are familiar with her work and want to go deeper into the person...especially of interest is seeing how she conceived of her spirituality and embrace of Jungian psychology. The book is a bit tragic because she references so many writing projects and so many promises of concepts and terms which were never realized before she passed away. There are some gems here, and much to be gained by feeling her rhythm and warmth as a person in these conversations. However, she has a tendency to point back to the concepts she has coined without working them out further or shedding any new light, which leaves me looking for more.
She has a discourse of integrated wholeness in her spirituality that I find paradoxical, especially since she is a great thinker of the power of refraction and fragmentation (Coyolxauhqui). I keep looking for more about how these aspects rub against one another, but the Sri Aurobindo and Carlos Castaneda (not to mention Jung) explanations I find obstruct her voice rather than elaborating it. The search continues!
She has a discourse of integrated wholeness in her spirituality that I find paradoxical, especially since she is a great thinker of the power of refraction and fragmentation (Coyolxauhqui). I keep looking for more about how these aspects rub against one another, but the Sri Aurobindo and Carlos Castaneda (not to mention Jung) explanations I find obstruct her voice rather than elaborating it. The search continues!
February 6, 2019
this was everything i needed.
December 28, 2022
she is controversial!! not for class but read in the context of preparing for my final paper. methods and themes spring 2022
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews