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Gloria Anzaldúa | "How to Tame a Wild Tongue"

Chicana-American lesbian-feminist poet and writer. Born on a ranch in southern Texas, Anzaldúa worked as an agricultural laborer as an adolescent until she went to Pan American University, the first woman from her family to attend college. She received an M.A. in English from the University of Texas, Austin, and taught writing at several colleges, including San Francisco State University; the University of California, Santa Cruz; and Vermont College. She has also been active in the migrant workers' rights movement. Her most ambitious work, Borderlands/La Frontera (1987), explores the situation of "border women'' like herself who grew up neither within their Mexican Indian heritage nor within the Anglo-American society that considered them outsiders. Her other works include the American Book Award–winning anthology, This Bridge Called My Back (1981), and Making Face, Making Soul/Haciendo Caras (1990).

Sites about Gloria Anzaldúa:

  • Link 1: http://voices.cla.umn.edu/vg

    The Voices from the Gap Web site, created at the University of Minnesota, provides biographies, critiques, and references for North American women writers of color. Their page on Anzaldúa offers an interesting critique of Borderlands/La Frontera and a selected bibliography students can use to explore literary criticism about their reading.

  • Link 2: http://chicanas.com/

    A Chicana feminist homepage containing news, discussions, interviews, literature, and academic resources. This site takes its title from Anzalúda's Haciendo Caras/Making Face, Making Soul: Creative and Critical Perspectives by Women of Color, and opens with a quote from Anzaldúa's Borderlands/La Frontera. You can find a brief description of Anzaldúa at http://chicanas.com/chingonas.html as well as "a variety of resources ranging from short biographies of Chicanas, to Chicana poetry and literature, cultural resources, academic resources, otras chicanas on the 'net, and more..."

  • Link 3: http://www.queertheory.com/histories/a/anzaldua_gloria.htm

    On this page from QueerTheory.com you’ll find a review of Interviews/Entrevistas (2000), a recent work that compiles ten years of interviews with Anzaldúa, bringing insight into Anzaldúa’s theories and writings, as well as her personal influences.

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