Gloria Anzaldúa (1942–2004)

This reader—which provides a representative sample of the poetry, prose, fiction, and experimental autobiographical writing that Anzaldúa produced during her thirty-year career—demonstrates the breadth and philosophical depth of her work. While the reader contains much of Anzaldúa’s published writing (including several pieces now out of print), more than half the material has never before been published. This newly available work offers fresh insights into crucial aspects of Anzaldúa’s life and career, including her upbringing, education, teaching experiences, writing practice and aesthetics, lifelong health struggles, and interest in visual art, as well as her theories of disability, multiculturalism, pedagogy, and spiritual activism. The pieces are arranged chronologically; each one is preceded by a brief introduction. The collection includes a glossary of Anzaldúa’s key terms and concepts, a timeline of her life, primary and secondary bibliographies, and a detailed index.… (meer)

For some reason I went into this thinking it was some sort of feminist manifesto, but it's an anthology of experiences of women of color, told through essays, poetry, biography and only sometimes political manifesto. It focuses particularly on experiences in feminism and those interpreted through feminist ideas but the focus is by no means exclusive. It has some limitations within its remit such as those mentioned in the introduction - eg limited to the US, almost exclusively talks about lesbian sexuality - but does an excellent job of covering a broad spectrum of experiences and voices. A lot of the writing is only a few pages so a lot of people and a lot of different perspectives get covered - even though I disagree with some of the politics etc it's inevitable and interesting and important to see it talked about. Reading about experiences from nearly 35 years ago and their hopes for change is inspiring and sometimes sad. Ultimately I have trouble faulting it, as long as you go in realising it's an anthology of experiences, all of which are emotional and interesting.… (meer)