Gloria Evangelina Anzaldúa (1942-2004) is probably the most influential Chicana cultural theorist, poet-philosopher, editor, and creative writer. A prolific author, she is best known for her book Borderlands/La Frontera (1987), which has been named as one of the 100 Best Books of the Century (Keating, “Introduction” 3). A number of scholars regard Borderlands/La Frontera as an autobiography, but Anzaldúa herself called her work an “autohistoria-teoría”, a term she created to describe the autobiographical writing of women of color that challenges western autobiographical notions which presuppose an autonomous, objective, detached (white, too often male) writing self. In her view, autohistoria-teoría is embodied writing that includes “life-story and self-reflection on this story” as well as a blend of the writer’s “cultural and personal biographies with memoir, history, storytelling, myth, and other forms of theorizing” thus generating “interwoven...
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Citation: Kirschner, Luz Angélica . "Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 24 October 2011 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=32843, accessed 08 December 2025.]
