Women Reading Women Writing

As self-identified lesbians of color, Paula Gunn Allen, Gloria Anzaldúa, and Audre Lorde negotiate diverse, sometimes conflicting, sets of personal, political, and professional worlds. Drawing on recent developments in feminist studies and queer theory, AnaLouise Keating examines the ways in which these writers, in both their creative and critical work, engage in self-analysis, cultural critique, and the construction of alternative myths and representations of women. Allen, Anzaldúa, and Lorde move within, between, and among the specialized worlds of academia and publishing; the private spaces of families and friends; the politicized communities of Native Americans, Chicanas/os, and African Americans; and the overlapping yet distinct worlds of feminist, lesbian/gay, and U.S. women of color. They translate their lives into words and enact new forms of identity that blur the boundaries between apparently distinct peoples. Keating explores how, by revising precolonial mythic and cultural traditions, they invent new ways of thinking that destabilize the networks of classification. Author note: AnaLouise Keatingteaches English and Women's Studies at Eastern New Mexico University.