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 This collection of Moraga’s first three successful plays established her as a leading Chicana playwright. West End Press first published Giving Up the Ghost in 1987. The revised version was printed in 1994 as part of this collection. Shadow of a Man was first performed in 1990 and Heroes and Saints in 1992. Ted Fishman of Chicago News and Arts Weekly called Shadow of a Man “the best kind of political work, performed with skill and sensitivity.”
Heroes and Saints has won particular critical acclaim due to its intervention in the history of the Chicano people. It grows out of the struggle of the United Farm Workers in 1988 and the revelations of a so-called cancer cluster in McFarland, California in which many Chicano children were diagnosed with cancer or stricken with birth defects. The play also draws from the Luis Valdez drama The Shrunken Head of Pancho Villa in which the head speaks and is the principle actor in the drama. Moraga underlines her debt to the public arena by dedicating the play to Cesar Chavez, the UFW leader. Order Copies |
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The Hungry WomanIn "The Hungry Woman," an apocalyptic play written at the end of the millennium, Moraga uses mythology and an intimate realism to describe the embattled position of Chicanos and Chicanas, not only in the United States but in relation to each other. Drawing from the Greek Medea and the Mexican myth of La Llorona, she portrays a woman gone mad between her longing for another woman and for the Indian nation which is denied her.The Heart of the EarthIn Heart of the Earth, a feminist revisioning of the Quiché Maya Popul Vuh story, Moraga creates an allegory for contemporary Chicanismo in which the enemy is white, patriarchal, and greedy for hearts, both female and fecund. Through humor and inventive tale twisting, Moraga brings her vatos locos home from the deadly underworld to reveal that the real power of creation is found in the masa Grandma is grinding up in her metate. The script, a collaboration with master puppet maker Ralph Lee, was created for the premiere production of the play at The Public Theater in New York in 1994. In an afterword to this edition, Moraga comments on her concerns about nationhood, indigenism, queer sexuality, and gender information.Order Copies |
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 Cherríe Moraga has added a new generational perspective to her classic collection of essays and poetry, Loving in the War Years. The four new essays in this expanded edition are written in a voice nearly a generation older than that which echoes off the pages Moraga first wrote in the late 1970s and early 1980s. The original section of Loving paints a vivid portrait of Moraga's coming-of-age as a Chicana and a lesbian at a time when the political merging of those two identities was severely censured. The new section is testimony to the complexity of identity politics in the time of the Right, as leftists of all stripes aimed to harness their hard-won self-knowledge and safe territory in the struggle to build power across their constituencies. Maintaining her focus on issues of race, sexuality, ideology, and political power, Moraga's posture is now closer to that of a zen warrior than a street-fighter, but her passionate engagement with life remains as intimate, insightful, and controversial as ever.
Weaving together poetry and prose, Spanish and English, family history and political theory, Loving in the War Years has been a classic in the feminist and Chicano canon since its 1983 release. The war years continue, and loving still resides in the uncensored word. The silenced sentence-lo que nunca pasó por sus labios-once spoken, inspires insurrection.
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 This highly politicized and intensely personal work bravely and eloquently argues for a reconceptualization of gender, sexuality, race, art, nationalism, and the politics of survival.
Crossing literary genres and moving freely between Spanish and English, Moraga ruminates on her identity as a lesbian writer/activist and her role in the Chicano community, weaving a rich tapestry of ancestors, lovers, politics, poetry, and life on the streets. Ultimately, The Last Generation's fierce honesty and incisive political analysis offer more than an inspiring portrait of the struggle of an activist artist; they build a compelling case for a radical transformation of consciousness and society.
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This Bridge Called My Back |
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Edited by Norma Alarcón, Ana Castillo, and Cherríe Moraga Sexuality is a collage of essays, poetry, fiction, and artwork from the "actively heterosexual, to the celibate, to the secretly sexual, to the politically visible lesbian." Both poignant and humorous, it's thirty-seven contributors examine attitudes toward and representations of sexuality. Among others, it features Gloria Anzuldúa, Elvia Alvarado, Julia Alvarez, Ana Castillo, Barbara Brinson Curiel, Denise Chavéz, Sandra Cisneros, Lucha Corpi, Arcelia Ponce, Ana María Simo, Carmen Tafolla, and Luz María Umpierre.
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A jewel of a book by this celebrated Chicana lesbian writer chronicling "one small human being's struggle for survival," her 21/2-pound premature baby boy. While the specifics belong to Moraga and her loved ones, the tale is told in common with every woman who has experienced the wonder and terror of pregnancy, the trauma of a child's near-death.
Cuentos: Stories by Latinas describe the varied experiences of Hispanic women. Anger, love, compassion, humor and pathos fill the pages of this collection. Most importantly, these women speak of their ability to overcome daily struggles of survival, and prevail.