Melanie Kaye/Kantrowitz on Gloria E. Anzaldúa

“Gloria Anzaldúa has consistently modelled commitment to writing as a life-organizing principle; in addition, Gloria, an old friend, and Chrystos, a new one, gave me courage to write honestly about violence.”

“Shame is a knife that carves out a culture's heart. To name, describe and defy shame is thus a profoundly rebellious, strengthening act, and nobody writes about shame like Gloria Anzaldúa-the shame of the other, the minority, the one whose face, hair, eyes, skin, speech, sexuality is different, not right...Those familiar with Anzaldúa's writing from This Bridge Called My Back, the groundbreaking collection she co-edited with Cherrie Moraga, know her as one of the most important and original voices of Third World feminism. In the borderlands new creatures come into being, including the "new mestiza" Anzaldúa celebrates in some of the boldest experimental writing to come out of the women's movement. Monique Wittig comes to mind, experimenting with language as well as form, or June Arnold, or the innovative English/Yiddish poetry of Irena Klepfisz, cited several times by Anzaldúa...the dominant note in the book is neither scolding nor grim. Anzaldúa loves her culture, language, people. Many of the poems are wildly humorous or optimistic simply by dint of their inventiveness ("Interface" or "Holy Relics," for example). She invokes new human possibility in the name of the new mestiza charged with pulling the human race into a future free from destruction, exploitation or oppression.”