A bold collection of creative pieces and theoretical essays by women of color. Making Face, Making Soul includes over 70 works by poets, writers, artists, and activists such as Paula Gunn Allen, Norma Alarcón, Gloria Anzaldúa, Lorna Dee Cervantes, Barbara Christian, Chrystos, Sandra Cisneros, Michelle Cliff, Judith Ortiz Cofer, Elena Creef, Audre Lorde, María Lugones, Jewelle Gomez, Joy Harjo, bell hooks, June Jordan, Trinh T. Minh-ha, Janice Mirikitani, Pat Mora, Cherríe Moraga, Pat Parker, Chela Sandoval, Barbara Smith, Mitsuye Yamada, and Alice Walker.
Anzaldúa’s unusual combination of scholarly research, folk tales, personal narrative, poetry and political manifesto, forms a powerful and cohesive whole. ― San Francisco Chronicle Review
Anzaldúa is an accomplished writer, able to marshal passionate intensity in support of her attempt to do away with dualities. ― Journal of the Southwest
She has chosen the most difficult task; that of mediating cultures without concession or dilution. ― Women’s Review of Books
Propelled by a strong indigenist current, Anzaldúa assumes a prophetic voice to create―by mythic, spiritual, mystic, intuitive and imaginative means―a new vision… ― The Americas Review
Many of the best pieces…combine the theoretical essay with poetry and personal narration, reflecting a breadth of emotion that most people keep tightly concealed. This is the book’s primary purpose, to give voice to thoughts and feelings which have been privatized and occluded. ― Publishers Weekly
Anzaldúa brings a poetic style steeped in Chicano/Chicana history and Aztec myth to bear upon issues that are too often treated in dry, theoretical terms…subverts the white middle-class perspective of much mainstream feminism with analysis, testimony, story, and song. ― Utne Reader
Gloria Anzaldúa was a Chicana-tejana-lesbian-feminist poet, theorist, and fiction writer from South Texas. In addition to authoring Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza (Aunt Lute, 1987), she was the editor of the critical anthology Making Face/Making Soul: Haciendo Caras (Aunt Lute, 1990) and co-editor of This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color (Persephone, 1981), winner of the Before Columbus Foundation American Book Award. Her works also include Interviews/Entrevistas (Routledge, 2000) and This Bridge We Call Home: Radical Visions for Transformation, edited with AnaLouise Keating (Routledge, 2002). She also authored three bilingual children’s books, including Prietita Has a Friend/Prietita tiene un amigo. She taught Creative Writing, Chicano Studies, and Feminist Studies at University of Texas, San Francisco State University, Vermont College of Norwich University, and University of California Santa Cruz.
Gloria Anzaldúa passed away in 2004 and was honored around the world for shedding visionary light on the Chicana experience by receiving the National Association For Chicano Studies Scholar Award in 2005. Gloria was also posthumously awarded her doctoral degree in literature from the University of California Santa Cruz. A number of scholarships and book awards, including the Anzaldúa Scholar Activist Award and the Gloria E. Anzaldúa Award for Independent Scholars, are awarded in her name every year.
