A writer's legacy

Illustration by Shawn Munguia / Valley Morning Star

In her lifetime, Gloria Evangelina Anzaldúa grew from a farmer's daughter to a world-renown author. While not often celebrated in the Rio Grande Valley where she was born and raised, the prolific and sometimes controversial writer was widely accepted elsewhere.

In June, the University of California at Santa Cruz awarded Anzaldúa a posthumous Ph.D. in literature in recognition of her 25 years as an independent scholar.

In the Beginning

Anzaldúa was born in a now-defunct city hospital in Raymondville on Sept. 26, 1942 and raised in a nearby farm in Hargill, where her family still resides.

As a young girl, Gloria and her younger siblings, Hilda, Urbano Jr. and Oscar, were farm workers. Their father, Urbano Anzaldúa leased land from Rio Farms and the family picked the cotton he grew.

Hilda said that while Gloria has been called a migrant farm worker — because the title "sounds more glamorous" to some — only their father worked as a migrant.

"He took us all once," Hilda said about the practice of going "up north" to find work. "He was a ‘patron' (supervisor). He took workers, but we were too little to work."

Urbano Sr. died in a car crash when Gloria was about 14 years old, Hilda said. Afterwards, Gloria and her siblings picked cotton for one of their uncles who owned a small farm.

"We were very poor," Hilda said.

From Rider to Writer

Despite early hardships Gloria became the only one in her immediate family to earn a college degree. By the time Gloria graduated from Edinburg High School the family had only one car, which her mother, Amalia, 79, used for work at a nursing home. Gloria carpooled almost every day to Pan American University in Edinburg with people like Santiago Davila, then a teacher at Edinburg Jr. High.

"I knew her since she was a little girl," said Davila, now of San Juan. "She didn't drive and she needed a ride. I had been in the same boat before."

Davila said that Gloria was a very quiet young lady.

"I never suspected she would be what she is," he said. "Very few people (in Hargill) knew how important she was until after she died."

Major Figure

After studying at Texas Women's University in Denton — before PAU — Anzaldúa eventually earned a master's of English degree from the University of Texas at Austin. She taught English at a local high school and later at the university level across the country before settling in California, where she resided until her death on May 15, 2004.

Along the way, the former farmer's daughter tilled her spiritual and cultural roots until she had reaped a new crop, becoming a noted Chicana writer.

Gloria's most famous work is "Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza," published in 1987. Announcing Gloria's Ph.D. award, Carla Freccero called Gloria "an internationally recognized feminist theorist, poet and essayist" whose "Borderlands" was "an insightful and remarkably original work that deeply influenced a broad range of fields in the humanities."

Bruce Simon, a professor at State University of New York at Fredonia, called Gloria's work groundbreaking and amazing.

"How many people have inspired an entire academic sub-field (border studies)?" he said. "She's very teachable and definitely sparks engaged dialogues among my students."

Gloria's longtime friend, AnaLouise Keating, said that Gloria, a lesbian, challenged the well-established ideas of sexism, homophobia, conservative religious beliefs and racism. Such writing did not make Gloria popular in South Texas. An online search for "Borderlands" yielded four copies of the book in area public libraries. Only two other books by Gloria are available — both of them children's books.

"It's not surprising that her beliefs were not embraced with open arms," said Keating, a professor at TWU. "She really loved South Texas, though. And her family didn't reject her."

Daughter, Sister, Writer

Before she passed away, Gloria would visit her family two or three times a year, Hilda said. She enjoyed Amalia's cooking, especially chicken and rice and calabaza con pollo (chicken and squash) — dishes that varied from Gloria's vegetarian diet.

"She hardly ever ate meat," Hilda said. "And she loved chile."

Mindful of deadlines, Gloria wrote during her visits.

"Writing was her first love," Hilda said. "She was always writing and scribbling. Forever she's been like that. She was night owl. She always wrote and then she slept until the afternoon."

Gloria would return to California with videotapes of science fiction shows that Hilda recorded. Her favorite had always been Star Trek and she also enjoyed Stargate SG-1 and the X-Files.

"She didn't watch TV much," Hilda said. "She didn't have cable."

The sisters last spoke on the phone about a week before Gloria died from a diabetic coma.

"Once your blood sugar goes down and you're asleep, you can't come out of it," Hilda said. "I can't believe she's gone."

True to her craft, Gloria was supposed to meet with her writing comadres the day she died, Hilda said. Keating co-edited a collection of interviews with Gloria.

"We were working on another anthology at the time of her death," Keating said. "I still find it difficult to believe that she's passed."

Gloria's Legacy

Gloria's writings sparked a sub-genre in literature —Anzaldúan theory.

"She wasn't afraid to express herself," said her proud sister Hilda. "She said it and wrote it too."

After she passed away, Gloria's family received several letters from a Chinese teacher and her young female charges expressing how reading Gloria's work had helped their writing.

"They said her writing would give them hope," Hilda said.

Gloria died before receiving the letters, which are being archived at UT Austin along with the author's other materials. Christian Kelleher, archivist at the Benson Latin American Collection there, said that an inventory of the collection would be published online. Kelleher said the collection would be stored in a secure, climate-controlled facility "so that they will be available for centuries to come.

"I've noticed that a lot of people have a very personal, emotional response when they hear that the Anzaldúa papers have been added to our holdings," Kelleher said. "Ms. Anzaldúa was known as a perfectionist who constantly refined her work before publication, so there is a lot of interest in her unpublished work."

Keating, Gloria's fellow writer, called her a meticulous writer.

"She did not want to publish her work until it was as perfect as possible," she said. "Partially, this desire to revise is because of her artistry but also because, as a woman of color, she knew she would be looked at and judged and therefore she wanted the writing to be very, very strong."

Among the Greats

"I believe that Gloria will still be read centuries from now," she said. "Her writings have changed the ways people think of American literature."

But don't take Keating's word for it. In 1998 the U.S. Department of State included her work in "Outline of American Literature," a sampling of the nation's best writing. In 2003 Gloria was featured alongside authors like Emily Dickinson, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Ernest Hemingway, Américo Paredes and Mark Twain in 16-part course, "American Passages: A Literary Survey," produced with funding from Annenberg and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

In November 2004, Gloria's work appeared in an anthology of essays and poetry as part of a United Nations Development Fund for Women book club. The National Association of Chicana and Chicano Studies named Gloria the NACCS Scholar 2005 in April.

"In essence, Gloria Anzaldúa forged a new territory, a new intellectual locale, a new spiritual space," wrote Emma Pérez in the Summer/Fall 2005 NACCS newsletter. "Long before she died, she had already surpassed any Chicana or Chicano scholar's reputation and distinction."

More recognition is forthcoming, Keating said. The American Studies Association, UC-Santa Cruz and the National Women's Studies Association have all proposed memorial awards.

The Gloria E. Anzaldúa collection will be available to the public by summer 2006. She is buried at Valle de la Paz cemetery in Hargill.