A Xicana Codex of Changing Consciousness: Writings, 2000-2010

A Xicana Codex of Changing Consciousness features essays and poems by CherrÍe L. Moraga, one of the most influential figures in Chicana/o, feminist, queer, and indigenous activism and scholarship. Combining moving personal stories with trenchant political and cultural critique, the writer, activist, teacher, dramatist, mother, daughter, comadre, and lesbian lover looks back on the first ten years of the twenty-first century. She considers decade-defining public events such as 9/11 and the campaign and election of Barack Obama, and she explores socioeconomic, cultural, and political phenomena closer to home, sharing her fears about raising her son amid increasing urban violence and the many forms of dehumanization faced by young men of color. Moraga describes her deepening grief as she loses her mother to Alzheimer’s; pays poignant tribute to friends who passed away, including the sculptor Marsha GÓmez and the poets Alfred Arteaga, Pat Parker, and Audre Lorde; and offers a heartfelt essay about her personal and political relationship with Gloria AnzaldÚa.Thirty years after the publication of AnzaldÚa and Moraga’s collection This Bridge Called My Back, a landmark of women-of-color feminism, Moraga’s literary and political praxis remains motivated by and intertwined with indigenous spirituality and her identity as Chicana lesbian. Yet aspects of her thinking have changed over time. A Xicana Codex of Changing Consciousness reveals key transformations in Moraga’s thought; the breadth, rigor, and philosophical depth of her work; her views on contemporary debates about citizenship, immigration, and gay marriage; and her deepening involvement in transnational feminist and indigenous activism. It is a major statement from one of our most important public intellectuals.

Table of Contents:
Drawings by Celia Herrera Rodríguez xiii Prólogo: A Living Codex xv Agradecimentos xix A Xicana Lexicon xxi One. Existo Yo A XicanaDyke Codex of Changing Consciousness 3 From Inside the First World: On 9/11 and Women-of-Color Feminism 18 An Irrevocable Promise: Staging the Story Xicana 34 Two. The Warring Inside What Is Left of Us 49 MeXicana Blues 51 Weapons of the Weak: On Fear and Political Resistance 54 California Dreaming 73 Cuento Xicano 76 Indígena as Scribe: The (W)rite to Remember 79 The Altar of My Undoing 97 Three. Salt of the Earth Aguas Sagradas 105 And It Is All These Things That Are Our Grief: Eulogy for Marsha Gómez 107 Poetry of Heroism: A Tribute to Audre Lorde and Pat Parker 111 The Salt That Cures: Remembering Gloria Anzaldúa 116 Four. The Price of Beans South Central Farmers 133 The Other Face of (Im)migration: In Conversation with West Asian Feminists 135 Floricanto 146 Modern-Day Malinches 148 What's Race Gotta Do With It? On the Election of Barack Obama 151 This Benighted Nation We Name Home: On the Fortieth Anniversary of Ethnic Studies 163 Still Loving in the (Still) War Years: On Keeping Queer Queer 175 Epílogo: Xicana Mind, Beginner Mind 193 Appendix: Sola, Pero Bien Acompañada: The Art of Celia Herrera Rodríguez 201 Notes 209 Bibliography 229 Index 237

About the Author :
CherrÍe L. Moraga is an award-winning playwright, poet, essayist, and activist. She is the author of Loving in the War Years and co-editor, with Gloria AnzaldÚa, of This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color. Moraga is a founding member of La RED Xicana IndÍgena, a network of Xicana activists committed to indigenous political education, spiritual practice, and grassroots organizing. She is an Artist-in-Residence in the Drama Department at Stanford University, where she also teaches in the Program in Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity.

Review :
"A Xicana Codex of Changing Consciousness builds upon the issues and innovations she explored in her earlier works... The book is a must for everyone, especially those interested in the intersections informing transnational women of color feminist practice." Alvina E. Quintana, Women's Review of Books, July 2012 "Cherrie Moraga's A Xicana Codex of Changing Consciousness is a Hope fulfilled. After the passing of Gloria Anzaldua, Chicana/o studies suffered something like an eclipse of the moon but here comes radical, creative light into our lives and scholarship once more. Moraga's intellectual and emotional courage about sexuality, race, QUEERNESS, and feminist energy shows us that Barack Obama and all Americans also live in the time of Latinos and Xicanas. Underlying these essays is the creative question 'how can this new demography of many colors and genders be cultivated into a new democracy?'" David Carrasco, author of Religions of Mesoamerica: Cosmovision and Ceremonial Centers "'I am no prophet, only a witness ... To the writing already on the wall ... That divides my own native homeland,' says Cherrie L. Moraga in the opening of her contemporary codex. Moraga speaks directly, as a powerful voice of a pivotal generation, a generation that is aging and coming to terms with its urgent, collective story. This political memoir in essays is a testimony to the awakening of an indigenous consciousness that has been disappeared in the memory of colonized Americas. The collection is blessed by the drawings of Celia Herrera Rodriguez. They provide the ceremonial flow. They represent the voices of the plants, earth, and elements that give dreaming to the human mind. What a powerful offering in a time of reckoning."--Joy Harjo, Mvskoke Nation, poet, musician, performer, playwright