Gloria E. Anzaldúa: Feminist Body Writing and Borderlands

By: Grażyna Zygadło

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Synopsis: 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.