Loving in the War Years

by Cherríe L. Moraga

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. This new edition—including a new introduction and three new essays—remains a testament 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.

Drawing on the Mexican legacy of Malinche, the symbolic mother of the first mestizo peoples, Moraga examines the collective sexual and cultural wounding suffered by women since the Conquest. Moraga examines her own mestiza parentage and the seemingly inescapable choice of assimilation into a passionless whiteness or uncritical acquiescence to the patriarchal Chicano culture she was raised to reproduce. By finding Chicana feminism and honoring her own sexuality and loyalty to other women of color, Moraga finds a way to claim both her family and her freedom.

Moraga's new essays, written with a voice nearly a generation older, continue the project of "loving in the war years," but Moraga's posture is now closer to that of a zen warrior than a street-fighter. In these essays, loving is an extended prayer, where the poet-politica reflects on the relationship between our small individual deaths and the dyings of nations of people (pueblos). Loving is an angry response to the "cultural tyranny" of the mainstream art world and a celebration of the strategic use of "cultural memory" in the creation of an art of resistance.

Cherríe Moraga is the co-editor of the classic feminist anthology This Bridge Called My Back and the author of The Last Generation. She is Artist-in-Residence at Stanford University.

Genres: Poetry, Feminism, Nonfiction, Queer, LGBT, Memoir, Essays

234 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1983

About the author

Cherríe Lawrence Moraga is a Chicana writer, feminist activist, poet, essayist, and playwright. She is part of the faculty at Stanford University in the Department of Drama and Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity. Her works explore the ways in which gender, sexuality and race intersect in the lives of women of color.

Moraga was one of the few writers to write and introduce the theory on Chicana lesbianism. Her interests include the intersections of gender, sexuality, and race, particularly in cultural production by women of color. There are not many women of color writing about issues that queer women of color face today: therefore, her work is very notable and important to the new generations. In the 1980s her works started to be published. Since she is one of the first and few Chicana/Lesbian writers of our time, she set the stage for younger generations of other minority writers and activists.

Moraga has taught courses in dramatic arts and writing at various universities across the United States and is currently an artist in residence at Stanford University. Her play, Watsonville: Some Place Not Here, performed at the Brava Theatre Company of San Francisco in May, 1996, won the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts Fund for New American Plays Award, from the Kennedy center for the Performing Arts. Barbara Smith, Audre Lorde and Moraga started Kitchen Table: Women of Color Press in 1983, a group which did not discriminate against homosexuality, class, or race. it is the first publisher dedicated to the writing of women of color in the United States.

Moraga is currently involved in a Theatre communications group and was the recipient of the NEA Theatre Playwriting Fellowship Award Her plays and publications have won and received national recognition including a TCG Theatre Residency Grant, a National Endowment for the art fellowship for play writing and two Fund for New American Plays Awards in 1993. She was awarded the United States artist Rockefeller Fellowship for literature in 2007.In 2008 she won a Creative Work Fund Award. The following year, in 2009 she received a Gerbode-Hewlett foundation grant for play writing.

(from Wikipedia)

Reviews

[Mehira · Rating 5 out of 5]

Don't really know how to write a review. Forgive me if I do this wrong.

All I can really say, as an American Asian-Chicana Latina who has questioned everything in her life...probably more than once, Cherrie Moraga validated me.

[Andrea · Rating 5 out of 5]

I wouldn't have re-read this if my co-teacher hadn't suggested we assign it in our experimental Queer Writing class, but you know what? It really holds up. And reading it on the heels of a bunch of New Narrative stuff made me think about how queer writers of color like Moraga have been fucking shit up for a LONG time--narrative, genre, gender etc etc--and not getting the cool points for it. What's that about?

[Corinne Blackmer · Rating 1 out of 5]

A highly politicized and propagandistic novel that includes indifferent poetry. The quasi-surrealistic story line posits that life for a Mexican-American lesbian amounts to life during a war; a proposition that anyone who has ever been in a war will find highly questionable. Granted that she uses the word war metaphorically, it still seems a grandiosely self-inflated description of her conflict with a homophobic mother (and culture). The use of postmodern literary techniques is gimmicky, the characters are flat and created in service of ideology, and the tone angry and resentful in an unjustified and unexplained fashion. I would not recommend this puerile piece of fiction to anyone who wishes to enjoy or learn from fiction.

[Jen · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book made me want to write about my personal experiences with regards to feminism, sexism and racism. It is inspirational but also challenging in the sense that I don't know if I could ever understand Moraga's perspective. Her values and ideas are clearly expressed but they are still difficult to grasp. Too often I felt like the world was split between oppressor and oppressed. What happens to those who are both? She exposes the elitism and cultural solipsism of literary critics, but does not advocate a solution...perhaps more opportunities for the inclusion of underrepresented minorities in positions of cultural authority (via policies such as bilingual education and affirmative action)?

[Elisabeth · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved Moraga's depiction of her mother and the death grip with which she held onto her. I relate to that fear of losing a mother very very much. When someone is so much a part of your heart and their face part of your comfort well. I get that learning of age and death as we come to terms with losing a mother. Aside from all that, such interesting feminist work. Poetry was beautiful, swept me along and the essays were insightful.

[D'Argo Agathon · Rating 3 out of 5]

Lots of bad poetry; some really good poetry; lots of really interesting personal points, gender theory, and chicana theory, that are made far better -- and far more clearly -- than Anzaldua's Borderlands; and a few stories that seem like ramblings. This collection of ideas is certainly not "just okay", but I wouldn't call it great, either.

[Mina · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is filled with highlighting and notes that I wrote to myself. It really hits hard. Moraga doesn't hold back. She writes intellectually but also emotionally. I feel that this is something unusual, this strong combination of the mind and heart.

[Maggie · Rating 5 out of 5]

so im still reading this and it is really intense and slightly frustrating because some of it is written in spanish and i dont know spanish but its a beautiful book with lots of really valuable and thoughtful and thought provoking (the best kind) of ideas and insights.

[Yesenia · Rating 5 out of 5]

i re-read this book every four of five years and love it each time!

[Jamie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Moraga's "Loving in the War Years" is frequently a beautiful and moving experience-her writing is precise and engaging, her message is lucid, and you'll find yourself often wanting to highlight and re-read a passage.

But. Keep in mind that much of her feminism is now considered outdated--and in spite of this, her essays are still far more powerful than her poems. It was fascinating to see the ways in which her political/theoretical thinking was influencing her creative writing--she often pairs the poems to their 'sources.' The poetry itself, however, is not really my style. It's conversational, super simple, with often cliched images or obvious 'uplifting' messages. So even though I recognized the limitations of the essays in the text, I still thought them far more emotionally resonant and haunting than the poetry. My other issue was with the fact that I felt as if I was reading the same general plot/thought/sentence over and over again. I feel as if she could have written all that was in this book in fifty pages--but it's thrice this long, and feels repetitive or 'beating-you-over-the-head' by the end.

All in all, I think 3 stars is pretty accurate. The essays would be 4 stars, the poems 2, and the unevenness of the text as a whole falls around a 3. Still worth a read if you've got the time, though.

[Virgowriter (Brad Windhauser) · Rating 4 out of 5]

A lot of interesting and important theory about culture and the intersection of gender and sexuality with that (at times). Often the focus is culture. Lot poetry, some of which accomplishes what it aims to, some falls flat. Some essays feel forced.

[Yooperprof · Rating 2 out of 5]

Just a note to say that the edition I read contained about 150 pages, while another widely reviewed edition of this work - with the same title - contains 264 pages. I don't know if the additional material would have made this a more satisfying reading experience, but the edition I read presented Moraga's work in a disjointed, fragmentary manner. Also, I have to say that I was largely indifferent to Moraga's poetry, which comprises more than half of the edition I read. Many of her poems are "politically" committed, but seem to lack "finish." That said, several of Moraga's essays are important and compelling historical documents in their own right.

[Lisa · Rating 3 out of 5]

Chicana, lesbian, woman, American, feminist, mixed race, Mexican. Cherríe Moraga writes on all of these identities in this collection of poems and essays that tell her life story (thematically, not chronologically). This collection is really hit and miss for me. I enjoy and get a lot out of some of her essays and I love how fluidly she moves between English and Spanish. She doesn't care to be understood, just to tell her story (in regard to language and content). I really like that approach in some of her pieces. At the same time though some of her poems and essays fall flat for me.

[Ruthie Jones · Rating 2 out of 5]

While I get the general point the author is trying to make, and I admire her courage and ability to express her sexual discovery and her struggles to identify, accept, and defend her identity as a chicana lesbian feminist, my initial impression of this writing is that it is a giant rant against all whites, all heterosexuals, and all men.

[S-Haq · Rating 4 out of 5]

Nationless
I take you in my arms
in the ordinary bed of a california
valley roadside motel
unwind the crimsoncotton
wrapped 'round your hips
and I enter you as deep and as hard as we want
because you were there too dying
in the midday sun
singing to the same god
and we want to touch it somehow
because our bodies are remembering
we want to gather all the touch we can
before we go back!

[Mert · Rating 2 out of 5]

2/5 Stars (%36/100)

Not a huge favourite. It was okay and meh sometimes. I read many books, articles, and poems about the feminist movement, women's rights, gender, and sexuality. I don't particularly enjoy them anymore. This was assigned to me so yeah. I found it uninteresting and sometimes very boring. I don't have many things to say.

[Andrea Garcia · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read this for my ethnic/gender literature course. I loved the poetic elements in her writing, great metaphors.. I did struggle with the Spanglish context I had to look up many words in English. This piece combined Chicana feminism and sexual identity. If you take anything discussing intersectionality this is a great piece to reference.

[Michelle · Rating 4 out of 5]

Yikes! I finished this book back in January but forgot to write a review back then. Let's see… I enjoyed the essay portions, particularly the final essay on identity. I love Cherrie so pretty much anything she writes, I'm going to love.

[Mya · Rating 3 out of 5]

Incredible ideas and theory. I struggled to really "get" the book, but really enjoyed certain elements, and much of the poetry as poetry alone. Moraga has already been crowned as feminist royalty after reading This Bridge Called My Back, and I was happy to be reading some of her other work.

[Elena Astilleros · Rating 4 out of 5]

Cherrie was the first leftist Latina writer that I read, understood, and could grapple with. Grateful for that. We need more writers like her.

Her lyrical poetry still sits on my tongue, appearing my language daily.

[Rochelle · Rating 3 out of 5]

A mix of short stories and prose, spanish and english, gay and chicana. The text was an interesting exploration of the author's identity, but it was not everything I'd hoped for.

[Kay Cid · Rating 5 out of 5]

powerful!

[Patty · Rating 5 out of 5]

this is a really really really good book

[Maha · Rating 4 out of 5]

really powerful read but you need some spanish to actually understand what's going on

[Patricia · Rating 5 out of 5]

Moraga's writing style is amazingly vivid - she just sucks you in.

[kate · Rating 5 out of 5]

dang.

[Joseramirez Ramirez · Rating 3 out of 5]

A really awesome mix of poetry, autobiography, and feminist theory by Cherrie Moraga (who writes about the intersctiong of her chicana, feminist, queer, etc identities).

[Miami University Libraries]

Demere Woolway read a selection from this book during the 2011 Women's Read-In. King Library (2nd floor) | PS3563.O753 L6 2000

[Zoë · Rating 5 out of 5]

I particularly liked what Moraga writes about La Malinche, La Chingada and Latin American sexuality. Spot on!

[Christina Olivares · Rating 5 out of 5]

<3