This innovative collection pairs portraits with critical biographies of twelve key Chicana writers, offering an engaging look at their work, contributions to the field, and major achievements.

Artist Raquel Valle-Sentíes’s portraits bring visual dimension, while essays delve deeply into the authors’ lives for details that inform their literary, artistic, feminist, and political trajectories and sensibilities. The collection brilliantly intersects artistic visual and literary cultural productions, allowing complex themes to emerge, such as the fragility of life, sexism and misogyny, Chicana agency and forging one’s own path, the struggles of becoming a writer and battling self-doubt, economic instability, and political engagement and activism.

Arranged chronologically by birth order of the authors, the book can be read cover to cover for a genealogical overview, or scholars and general readers can easily jump in at any point and read about an individual author, regardless of the chronology.

Biographies included in this work include Raquel Valle-Sentíes, Angela de Hoyos, Montserrat Fontes, Gloria E. Anzaldúa, Norma E. Cantú, Denise Elia Chávez, Carmen Tafolla, Cherríe Moraga, Ana Castillo, Lorna Dee Cervantes, Sandra Cisneros, and Demetria Martínez.

Contributors

Cordelia E. Barrera

Mary Pat Brady

Norma E. Cantú

María Jesus Castro Dopacio

Carlos Nicolás Flores

Myrriah Gómez

Maria Magdalena Guerra de Charur

Gabriella Gutiérrez y Muhs

Georgina Guzmán

Cristina Herrera

María Esther Quintana

Eliza Rodríguez y Gibson

Meagan Solomon

Lourdes Torres

Raquel Valle-Sentíes

Jen Yáñez-Alaniz