Accidents of Chicana Feminisms: Norma Alarcón, Gloria Anzaldúa, and Cherríe Moraga

Abstract

The maternal has been at the center of Feminist theoretical and literary debates for the better part of the twentieth century in Europe, Latin America, and the United States. Indeed, the maternal is a point of contact between writers as diverse as Julia Kristeva, Norma Alarcón, Gloria Anzaldúa, and Cherríe Moraga. Not surprisingly, the Chicana and queer authors emerging from the southwestern region of the United States give the maternal a very specific form, particularly after the publication of This Bridge Called my Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color in 1981. In this chapter, I discuss how the maternal is represented in the texts of three of the most influential Chicana writers emerging from that book.¹ At stake in this discussion is the place of Chicana writing vis-à-vis both Feminist and postfeminist readings of the maternal.