Description
Book SynopsisAn updated edition combining two classic works of Chicana and queer literatures, with a new introduction by renowned writer and luminary, Cherríe Moraga.
In celebration of the 40th anniversary of its original publication, this updated edition of Loving in the War Years combines Moraga’s classic memoir with The Last Generation: Poetry and Prose, originally published in 1993, along with additional writings from the late 1990s, The result is a synergy of signature works crucial to the development of the intersectional politics we know today.
Cherríe Moraga’s powerful memoir remains as urgent as ever. She explores the contradictions and complexities of her Chicana and lesbian identities, moving gracefully between poetry and prose, Spanish and English, personal narratives and political theory. Moraga recounts navigating the world largely as an outsider in her early years, circling the interconnected societies around her from a distant yet observant perspective. Ultimately, however, her writing serves as a bridge between her cultures, languages, family, and herself, enabling her to look inward to forge connections from what had heretofore been inaccessible parts of her interior world. A touchstone for artists and activists, the works combine to show how deep self-awareness and compassionate engagement with one’s radically changing surroundings are key to building global solidarity among people and political movements.
Trade Review“Cherríe Moraga speaks directly, as a powerful voice of a pivotal generation, a generation that is aging and coming to terms with its urgent, collective story.”
—Joy Harjo
“Cherríe Moraga is a literary giant and spiritual genius whose visionary and courageous work and witness constitutes a prophetic light in our dark times of imperial decay!”
—Cornel West
“When future generations look back at the first generation of Latino/a literature, Cherríe Moraga's formative work will be one of the cornerstones of what by then will be American Literature. Without her work, many of us would not have felt the solidarity and power or had the critical vocabulary or understanding to give voice to our own stories.”
—Julia Alvarez
“[
Loving in the War Years is] an important book of the purest perception, courage, intensity, power. Innovative, heartachingly beautiful at times, deeply honest—it can act as a change-making book.”
—Tillie Olsen
"Sophisticated, visceral, rigorous, and relentless, Cherríe Moraga’s writings are as essential as ever. Bridging poetry and politics, her interrogations of the self and society are a lifelong project she has gifted new and returning readers. Even in her earliest writings, Moraga reaches to the future through the bifurcated paths of her personal journey in queerness, Chicanidad, and solidarity with all colonized peoples. Moraga’s indispensable interrogations of language and art demands nothing short of complete freedom for all bodies. It is a war cry that continues to liberate as it echoes across decades and generations."
—Carribean Fragoza, author of Eat the Mouth That Feeds You
