Cherrie Moraga Biography

Chicana writer, born in Whittier, California, educated at San Francisco State University. Moraga was one of the first writers to explore Chicana lesbianism. She co-edited This Bridge Called My Back: Radical Writings by Women of Color (1981) with Gloria Anzaldúa and began establishing her own voice as a literary critic, particularly in her examination of the key differences between white feminism and the feminism practised by women of colour. As a lesbian who is half Chicana and half Anglo, is her first individual work, Loving in the War Years (1983), Moraga articulated her complex bicultural relationship to Anglo and Chicano culture. In her play Giving Up the Ghost (1986), the Chicana heroine embraces the potential of her lesbianism, rather than rejecting it. The Last Generation (1993) is a compelling collection of prose and poetry that displays her continuing commitment to the advancement of the Chicano people; like her other works, the book is highly politicized and moves across literary genres in a bilingual method of expression that reconsiders ideas surrounding gender, sexuality, and ethnic identity.