The Gloria Anzaldúa Reader

admin — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 17:01:00 +0000

I should probably start by saying that I absolutely love Gloria Anzaldúa. She was a writer whose work focused mostly on her identities as a woman, Chicana, lesbian, feminist, etc.—identities she insisted could not be separated from one another. She is probably best known for co-editing This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color and for her book Borderlands/La Frontera, The New Mestiza.

Anzaldúa’s work engages me in a unique way, so I was equal parts ecstatic and apprehensive to start The Gloria Anzaldúa Reader. There are so many ways this could go—there could be too much new or obscure material, too much old material, too much academia, etc. Luckily for me, the book provides just the right balance and showcases Anzaldúa in a way that made me love her even more.

The book is divided into four sections: early writings, middle writings, images, and later writings. The divisions are based mostly on chronology, but there are also certain themes that are more prevalent in one section than another. Every section starts with a quote from Anzaldúa’s works and each piece has a short introduction. The introductions were very useful because they often provided the context of where it fit into Anzaldúa’s writing, listed some of the themes in the piece, and sometimes suggested what other works to read in order to explore the themes in that piece.

What I liked most about this book is that the editor, AnaLouise Keating, does a great job of including a bit of everything in almost every way. There are poems, fictional stories, autobiographical pieces, drawings, transcripts of talks and email exchanges, and so forth. In terms of content, there are at least a couple of pieces for all of the issues important to Anzaldúa: feminism, culture, queer studies, and disability. For example, the book contains an interview about spirituality and sexuality, a piece about her preference for the term “dyke” instead of “lesbian,” several pieces about culture and identity, a poem about the process of writing, an email exchange about disability, and the list goes on. It gives a great introduction to people who have never before read Anzaldúa’s work, but even die-hard fans will like the book because it includes a good amount of unpublished material.

I enjoyed almost everything included in this book, but I did earmark a few that stood out to me. There were a few pieces about how Anzaldúa started writing and the methods she uses for writing that I liked a lot. Similarly, a piece on creativity was one of my favorites, in which she explores the rational mind, imagination, her sensitivity to the world around her, and how all of that comes together when doing something like writing. There was also a very funny story about a woman so saddened by her husband’s death that he comes back as a ghost, at which point she realizes just how sick of him she really was.

One thing that I might have changed is the placement of the images. It was great to include them and a couple of the drawings make my list of favorite pieces in the book, but I think putting them all together in between other chapters seemed awkward. For me, it was reminiscent of a biography with photos in the middle. Perhaps spreading them throughout the chapters might have been better and more in tune with Anzaldúa’s own style of switching through mediums within the same work. But I have to admit that this is probably just nitpicking to find flaws in an otherwise incredible book.

Written by: frau sally benz, February 9th 2010

Toward a Latina Feminism of the Americas: Repression and Resistance in Chicana and Mexicana Literature

admin — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 09:00:00 +0000

By Anna Marie Sandoval

University of Texas Press

Anna Marie Sandoval has written a very personal book: Toward a Latina Feminism of the Americas: Repression and Resistance in Chicana and Mexicana Literature. Can a book about such a scholarly topic be personal? In the preface and afterword (eighteen pages), Sandoval explains how. To summarize would be to remove the reader’s pleasure for those who will venture into her story. Suffice to say that Sandoval has taken a chance: the academic is so rarely personal that she might be faulted for including these sections. However, Sandoval’s own “Chicana” story of repression and resistance comes to frame the analysis that she presents in her books of the works of authors: Sandra Cisneros (Chapter 2), Carmen Boullosa, Laura Esquivel (both Chapter 3) and Helena María Viramontes (Chapter 4). Just as real life often intersects with literature, as Sandoval demonstrates in her analysis, literature intersects with real life.

Chapter one introduces some of the critical theoretical elements necessary to framing the study of the Mexicana and Chicana genres. Sandoval provides a very thorough review of existing literature and includes subsections on context and mythologies. While all parts are quite detailed, some of the shared (social, political, and literary) history of the Mexicanas and Chicanas appear superficially covered, possibly an editing decision linked to the vulgarisation process.

The sections on Boullosa, Cisneros, and Viramontes are very well executed, especially in her very perceptive textual analysis. It is difficult to make innovative points regarding Como agua para chocolate, perhaps the most over-analysed Mexicana novel. Chapter three did hold some promise when Sandoval mentioned the importance of the Chicana grandniece’s gaze, but she failed to produce an assessment of it, something that would have helped bridge the Mexicana-Chicana divide, a concept central de Sandoval’s analysis. Furthermore, in her brief analysis of the novel (the shortest of all the authors examined), she did not reflect on the ambiguity of Mama Elena’s symbolic upholding of patriarchal ideals (since she did have an affair and child), a position which is essential to any analysis of repression and resistance in the feminist context.

In her chapter four discussion of Chicana writers and mainstream presses, Sandoval does not support her argumentation surrounding the “marketability” of Chicana writers with figures. Regrettably, she does not make the explicit link between marketability and what she deems “continuing overt racism and sexism.” Her provocative stance denouncing mainstream presses’ publishing decisions is undermined by her own lack of supporting evidence as well as by the fact that her analysis centers on authors published by mainstream presses. She warns against an ‘exoticization’ of these texts as representative of all experience of Latino and Chicano, paradoxically something to which she seems to contribute.

Overall, the book is very well written and can be read very easily. There were a few occasions when I questioned Sandoval’s expression, perhaps where she endeavoured to be too exhaustive in her writing. For example, exactly what is “U.S. third world women’s feminist discourse”? In the same vein, I was puzzled about how, by its very nature, Chicana literature could be neither “gender- or ethnicity-specific” and what exactly “women-centered spaces in Chicana literature” would be like?

Regardless of these minor questions, this book makes a significant contribution to the developing field of transnational analysis. The Chicana act of resistance hinges on the act of writing the story, as apparent in Viramontes’ heartbreaking story of a Guatemalan immigrant’s murder (Chapter 4). Consequently, both Sandoval’s personal story and literary analysis are very much a part of this progression “toward a Latina feminism.”

Written by: Sophie M. Lavoie, July 3rd 2009

latina feminism

The Gloria Anzaldúa Reader

Toward a Latina Feminism of the Americas: Repression and Resistance in Chicana and Mexicana Literature