Gloria Anzaldua was a writer, poet, and professor. She and her four younger siblings grew up in Texas with her family working on ranches and farms. Anzaldua was Chicana, meaning of Mexican descent but living in the United States.
Being Chicana compelled her to do her dissertation at the University of California Santa Cruz about the impact of colonization on women.
She also supported other female writers of color, forming writing groups and editing “This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color”; feminism was one of the subjects on which she focused her writing.
Anzaldua also wrote about race and sexuality, helping to form Queer Theory. One of her major works is “Borderlands/La Frontera.” It explores the different kinds of borders that separate people (like culture) and is a collection of poems.
“Borderlands was named one of the 38 best books of 1987 by the Library Journal.
[It] was selected by the Utne Reader for inclusion in their Loose Canon, a list of 150 works that ‘broaden, deepen, or define the experience of being alive,’” said the University of Texas’s website.
In the early 1990’s, Anzaldua was diagnosed with Type I diabetes. Because of her diabetes, Anzaldua passed away in 2004.