Saturday, June 05, 2004

Writer Gloria Anzaldúa died on May 18, 2004 at the age 61 - I've only today learned of this tremendous loss. Gloria Anzaldúa's work and presence was very important for my development as a scholar and as a person. I had the honor of meeting her twice. The first time was when she came as a guest of the Women's Studies Department to Penn State where I was a masters student. The second time I had the pleasure of interviewing her during during her visit to Lexington, Kentucky for the 1993 Women Writers Conference at the University of Kentucky.

Our two-hour conversation that evening in Kentucky covered a range of topics relating to her book Borderlands/La Frontera (1987), the conference she had just completed, and her recent diagnosis of diabetes. As I noted in the introduction to the published interview, we discussed the various "socio-spatial relations where borderlands work takes place: between two lovers; between doctor and patient; between the United States and its Norteamericano neighbors; between different 'American' ethnic groups thrown into the 'Hispanic' umbrella; between the girl-child and international machismo culture; between non-Western literature and the academy" (p. 76). The interview was conducted by members of the editorial collective appeared in the fourth volume of the annual journal disClosure (1994-1995), edited and published by graduate students pursuing the Certificate in Social Theory at the University of Kentucky. More information on subscribing to the journal and purchasing back issues can found at the website of the University of Kentucky Committee on Social Theory.

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