Cherrie Moraga Talks About Identity

The Xicana Writer, Cherrie Moraga talks about the importance of having an Identity - Interview by Patricia Munoz, Managing Editor of the Latino Information Network at Rutgers (LINAR) - linar.rutgers.edu - 2013

[@mixtecjaguar9824]

You talk so much about wanting to be MExican. Why don't you take up Mexican citizenship?

[@DuRiedo]

Have you read anything that she has written? Lol citizenship is one of the concepts she creates and does not create "Mexicanness"

[@mixtecjaguar9824]

@@DuRiedo Well, being Mexican is one thing, being Hispanic is another. It's hard to rally for any cause she argues, when she has been privileged all her life.

[@DuRiedo]

@@mixtecjaguar9824 I dont think she is ever saying she didnt have privilege. Shes also not wanting to claim being Mexican alone, she helped to popularize Chicana identity to highlight the unique position she holds. In fact, in her and Gloria Anzalduas work they specifically talk about how dark-skinned Mexicans and Indigenous peoples in Mexico are specifically targeted for erasure. Even in the video, she just talks about her own experiences with having a mix of privilege and oppression...

[@Alansuckmyball]

What a ridiculously ignorant comment. Embarrassingly so! She is both Mexican and American. It is an important part of her identity, and the identities of lots of Americans who have immigrant parents. Asian-Americans, black Americans, Latin Americans, European Americans, they all grapple with the different parts of their identities in the American cultural melding pot. You probably are reacting so negatively to her simply explaining the Chicana part of her Chicana-American identity because you have no culture of your own, and don't understand the concepts she's explaining that many other people can understand because they have the ancestral substance you lack.