Gloria
Anzaldua
Self-described "chicana dyke-feminist, tejana patlache poet, writer, and cultural theorist."
Born in 1942, Gloria Anzaldua was raised on a ranch settlement in south Texas (she lived on the borderlands both figuratively and literally).
She grew up in a linguistically rich environment, learning many English and Spanish dialects.
Though her parents were not well-educated, they encouraged their sons to focus on their education; they did not do so for Gloria.
When she was 15, her father passed away, which led her to begin working in the fields to support her family. Despite her family encouraging her to work in the fields full-time, she attended Pan American University, where she earned a Bachelor's degree in 1969. (She enrolled in English courses, which attempted to remove her accent.)
Her family saw higher education as inappropriate for women, and thus, did not support her educational decisions. They not only objected to her education, but also her lesbian identity.
In 1972, she earned her Master's degree from the University of Texas. She stayed to earn her Ph.D., but eventually left because they would not let her write her dissertation on feminist Chicana literature.
She moved to Santa Clara, where she died from diabetes in 2004.
Gloria Anzaldua was a Social Constructionist, in that she believed that rhetoric creates truth, knowledge, and reality. She also believed that one's identity is a performance, and that language is identity-formative and creates hierarchies.
"We use our language differences against each other."
Anzaldua strongly believed that we live in a man's world. One example of this is from her text, "How to Tame a Wild Tongue," where she says that she had never heard the term, "nosotras" in the Spanish language because everyone assumed "nosotros" was the only conjugation.
Other examples are HIStory, fireMAN, and huMANity.
BIOGRAPHY
EPISTEMOLOGY
"I was the only woman, not just the only woman, the only person from the area who ever went to college."
8 LANGUAGES
1. Standard English
2. Working class and slang English
3. Standard Spanish
4. Standard Mexican Spanish
5. North Mexican Spanish dialect
6. Chicano Spanish (Texas, New Mexico, Arizona and California have regional variations)
7. Tex-Mex
8. Pachuco (called caló) (77).
"Repeated attacks on our native tongue diminish our sense of self."