In this episode, we discuss the life and work of queer Chicana poet, essayist, and theorist Gloria E. Anzaldúa. Quoting from The Gloria Anzaldúa Reader edited by AnaLouise Keating: “Born in the Rio Grande Valley of south Texas, Gloria Anzaldúa was an internationally acclaimed cultural theorist. As the author of Borderlands / La Frontera: The New Mestiza, Anzaldúa played a major role in shaping contemporary Chicano/a and lesbian/queer theories and identities. As an editor of three anthologies, including the groundbreaking This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color, she played an equally vital role in developing an inclusive, multicultural feminist movement.”
For this episode, we are joined by AnaLouise Keating, professor of Multicultural Women’s and Gender Studies at Texas Woman’s University and personal friend of Anzaldúa; and ire’ne lara silva, 2023 Texas State Poet Laureate and multi-genre writer. You can read their full bios below.
AnaLouise and ire’ne are interviewed by Nate King, Digital Content Associate at the American Writers Museum. This conversation originally took place September 17, 2024 and was recorded over Zoom.
About our guests:
AnaLouise Keating, Ph.D is an author and educator whose work focuses on transformation studies: Gloria Anzaldúa; womanist spiritual activism; post-oppositional thought; esoteric wisdom traditions; multicultural pedagogies; U.S. women-of-colors theories; and yin yoga. AnaLouise is the author, most recently, of The Anzaldúan Theory Handbook (Duke University Press) and Transformation Now! Toward a Post-Oppositional Politics of Change (University of Illinois Press). She worked with Gloria Anzaldúa for the last decade of Anzaldúa’s life, editing Anzaldúa’s Interviews/Entrevistas and co-editing, with Anzaldúa, this bridge we call home: radical visions for transformation. Since Anzaldúa’s death, Keating has edited two of Anzaldúa’s books: The Gloria Anzaldúa Reader (Duke University Press) and Light in the Dark/Luz en lo Oscuro: Rewriting Identity, Spirituality, Reality (Duke University Press). Dr. Keating’s other books include Teaching Transformation: Transcultural Classroom Dialogues (Palgrave Macmillan), Women Reading Women Writing: Self-Invention in Paula Gunn Allen, Gloria Anzaldúa, and Audre Lorde (Temple University Press), EntreMundos/Among Worlds: New Perspectives on Gloria Anzaldúa, and Bridging: How and Why Gloria Anzaldúa’s Life and Work Transformed Our Own (co-edited with Gloria Gonzalez-Lopez).
Dr. Keating also edits a book series at the University of Illinois Press. Her series, Transformations: Womanist, Feminist, & Indigenous Studies, seeks to revolutionize academic life and thought. Transforming oppositional critique into post-oppositional perspectives, this series offers exciting opportunities for transdisciplinary scholarship informed by women-of-colors theory and relational approaches to knowledge production, creativity, and social justice. Dr. Keating is a professor of Multicultural Women’s & Gender Studies at Texas Woman’s University. She is also a certified yoga instructor (ERYT-500) and teaches Yin yoga several times each week at a worker-owned, social-justice-focused yoga studio in Denton, TX. Learn more at https://analouisekeating.com/
ire’ne lara silva, 2023 Texas State Poet Laureate, is the author of five poetry collections, furia, Blood Sugar Canto, CUICACALLI/House of Song, FirstPoems, and the eaters of flowers, two chapbooks, Enduring Azucares and Hibiscus Tacos, and a short story collection, flesh to bone, which won the Premio Aztlán. ire’ne is the recipient of a 2021 Tasajillo Writers Grant, a 2017 NALAC Fund for the Arts Grant, the final Alfredo Cisneros del Moral Award, and was the Fiction Finalist for AROHO’s 2013 Gift of Freedom Award. Most recently, ire’ne was awarded the 2021 Texas Institute of Letters Shrake Award for Best Short Nonfiction. ire’ne is currently a Writer at Large for Texas Highways Magazine. Her first comic book, VENDAVAL, was released by the Chispa Imprint of Scout Comics in July 2024. Her second short story collection, the light of your body, will be published by Arte Publico Press in Spring 2025. Learn more at: https://irenelarasilva.wordpress.com/