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Cherríe L. Moraga AuthorPhoto for REPRO-cherrie moraga.jpg Born Cherríe Lawrence Moraga September 25, 1952 (age 66) Whittier, California, U.S. Occupation Playwright activist Nationality American Subject Feminism Chicana studies Notable works This Bridge Called My Back, Heroes and Saints Notable awards Critics' Circle; PEN West; American Book Award Cherríe Lawrence Moraga[1] (born September 25, 1952) is a Chicana writer, feminist activist, poet, essayist, and playwright.[2][3] She is part of the faculty at the University of California, Santa Barbara in the Department of English. Moraga is also a founding member of the social justice activist group La Red Xicana Indígena which is an organization of Xicanas fighting for education, culture rights, and Indigenous Rights.[4] The La Red Xicana Indigena is an organization whose goals are to help raise indigenous consciousness among different communities. Early life Moraga was born on September 25, 1952 in Whittier, California.[5] Her mother was the only daughter out of six to marry an Anglo and was the sole supporter of her family at the age of 14. In her article "La Guera" Moraga wrote of her experiences growing up as a child of a white man and a Hispanic woman, stating that "it is frightening to acknowledge that I have internalized a racism and class-ism, where the object of oppression not only someone outside of my skin, but the someone inside my skin."[6] Moraga has cited her mother as her main inspiration to become a writer, stating that she was an eminent storyteller.[7] Moraga writes that her mother was "a fine storyteller recalling every event in her life with the vividness of the present."

In high school Moraga enrolled in college prep courses and went on to attend Immaculate Heart College in Los Angeles, California, gaining a graduateda bachelor's degree in English in 1974. Moraga taught high school English in Los Angeles from 1974-1977, finding this unfulfilling, she enrolled in a writing class at the Women's Building and produced her first lesbian poems.[5][8] In 1977 she moved to San Francisco where she supported herself as a waitress, became politically active as a burgeoning feminist, and discovered women of color feminism. She earned her master's degree in Feminist Writings from San Francisco State University in 1980.[citation needed]

Moraga has been credited[by whom?] as one of the few writers to write and introduce the theory of Chicana lesbianism.[citation needed] Themes in her writing include the include the intersections of gender, sexuality, and race, particularly in cultural production by women of color.[9] Moraga's work was featured in tatiana de la tierra's Latina lesbian magazine Esto no tiene nombre, which sought to inform and empower Latina lesbians through the work of writers like Moraga.[9] Sexuality Moraga is openly gay, having come out as a lesbian after her college years. Moraga states in her book Loving in the War Years that she knew she was gay at the age of 10. In "La Guera" Moraga compared the discrimination she experienced as a lesbian to her mother's experiences being a poor, uneducated Hispanic woman, stating that “My lesbianism is the avenue through which I have learned the most about silence and oppression, and it continues to be the most tactile reminder to me that we are not free human beings”.[7] After coming out, Moraga began writing more heavily and became involved with the feminist movement.[citation needed] In Loving in the War Years, Moraga cites Capitalist Patriarchy: A Case for Social Feminism as an inspiration when realizing her intersecting identity as a Chicana lesbian, saying, "The appearance of these sisters' words in print, as lesbians of color, suddenly made it viable for me to put my Chicana and lesbian self in the center of my movement."[10] Career Literature and writing In 1983 Barbara Smith, Audre Lorde and Moraga started Kitchen Table: Women of Color Press, which has been credited as the first publisher dedicated to the writing of women of color in the United States.[11] Writer Jaime M. Grant credits Kitchen Table with "literally transforming the conversation on racism, sexism and homophobia in the classroom in the last decade." Later that same year Moraga's first sole-authored book, Loving in the War Years: lo que nunca pasó por sus labios, was published.[12] Moraga co-edited the anthology This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color with Gloria Anzaldúa.[13] Released in 1986, the book won the Before Columbus Foundation American Book Award for that year.[14] Along with Ana Castillo and Norma Alarcon, she adapted this anthology into the Spanish-language Esta puente, mi espalda: Voces de mujeres tercermundistas en los Estados Unidos.

In 2007 Moraga was named a 2007 USA Rockefeller Fellow and granted $50,000 by United States Artists.[citation needed][15] She won a Creative Work Fund Award in 2008, and the Gerbode-Hewlett Foundation Grant for Playwriting in 2009.[16]

Still Loving in the (Still) War Years In 2009 Moraga published the essay “Still Loving in the (Still) War Years: On Keeping Queer Queer", which critiqued the mainstreaming of LGBT politics through an emphasis on same-sex marriage. During the essay she also discussed transgender people in queer communities and critiqued the increasing inclusion of trans issues in LGBT politics. She argues that young people are being pressured into transitioning by the larger queer culture, stating “the transgender movement at large, and plain ole peer pressure, will preempt young people from residing in that queer, gender-ambivalent site for as long and as deeply as is necessary.” (184)[incomplete short citation] Some community members such as Morgan Collado and Francisco Galarte responded by emphasizing how this invalidated and dismissed the lived experience of young people who decide to transition.[17][18] In this essay Moraga goes further to lament what she sees as the loss of butch and lesbian culture to those who choose to transition, stating that she “[does] not want to keep losing [her] macha daughters to manhood through any cultural mandates that are not of our own making.” (186) In response to this, Galarte argued that “Moraga’s text forces transgender folks to bear the burden of proving loyalty to a nation as well as being the figure that is the exemplar of race, sex, and gender abjection and liberation" (131-32)[incomplete short citation].[18] She was also criticized for her refusal to address transwomen in the essay.[citation needed]