Borderlands La Frontera

Gloria Anzaldúa was among the first openly lesbian Chicana writers and an influential feminist critic, poet, teacher, feminist, and queer theorist whose work often collapsed the distinction between different identity categories and genre conventions. Born in the Rio Grande Valley to Spanish American and Indigenous American parents who worked as migrant farmers and ranchers, Anzaldúa spent her youth immersed in the landscapes of the Southwest and South Texas. Later, she earned her bachelor’s degree in English from Pan-American University. While working as a teacher, she earned a master’s degree in English and education from the University of Texas at Austin in 1972 and returned there to pursue her doctoral studies. During this time, she concluded that American women of color were deeply underrepresented in publishing and decided to edit an anthology that became This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color. In 1987, she published Borderlands / La Frontera: The New Mestiza, which combined poetry and prose that explored her experiences as a radical feminist Chicana lesbian writer and activist. Anzaldúa continued to publish and teach throughout the 1980s, 1990s, and 2000s, returning at various points to her doctoral studies. She died in 2004 from diabetes-related complications and was posthumously awarded a doctorate in literature by the University of California Santa Cruz.