Gloria E. Anzaldúa is a crucial figure in contemporary border and women’s studies. When in 1987 she published her groundbreaking book Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza, she became one of the most often quoted writers of the US–Mexico border, but she remains relatively little known outside Americas.
In one of the first monographs written on her work, Grażna Zygadło introduces Anzaldúa’s work and outlines her feminist revisionist thinking to new audiences, especially in Europe. The author defines these borderlands as areas where numerous systems of power, exploitation, and oppression intersect – capitalism, patriarchy, racism, and white man’s supremacy. She also concentrates on the innovative philosophy of women’s writing from the body that Anzaldúa has propagated and on her formative role in the women of color feminism. Zygadło also works to expand Anzaldúa’s borderland thinking by applying it to the recent issues related to migration crisis and border problems in the European Union – namely the contradictory treatment of refugees at the Polish eastern border.
Gloria E. Anzaldúa is situated at the intersection of various disciplines, in particular, American cultural studies, feminist criticism, and Latin American postcolonial studies, and is a valuable source of knowledge about Anzaldúa’s ideas for undergraduate and graduate students.
Table of Contents:
Preface
Introduction: "I put myself in the words I write"
Chapter 1. "I am a turtle, wherever I go I carry 'home' on my back" – Gloria Anzaldúa’s Life and Work
Chapter 2. "Voyager, there are no bridges, one builds them as one walks" – Gloria Anzaldúa’s theories and ideas
Chapter 3. "Where the Third World grates against the first and bleeds" – Borderlands theory According to Gloria Anzaldúa
Chapter 4. "I usually learn the most when I teach" – Teaching Gloria Anzaldúa at the Polish University to the international students
Conclusion. "Who am I a poor Chicanita, from the sticks, to think I could write" – Gloria Anzaldúa’s legacy
References
Annex
About the Author :
Grażyna Zygadło is Associate Professor in the Department of American Studies and Mass Media and an affiliate in the Women’s Studies Center at the University of Lodz. Her major research areas include the marginalization of minorities in the US, specifically Latinx diaspora; women of colors feminism and literature; postcoloniality; the existence of borderland territories; and the relations between knowledge and power. She was a guest lecturer at the universities in Spain, Finland, Sweden, and Florida International University in Miami. She is a member of the Society for the Study of Gloria Anzaldúa (SSGA) and HispaUSA Asociación de estudios sobre la población de origen hispano en EEUU.
