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Light in the Dark/Luz en lo Oscuro: Rewriting Identity, Spirituality, Reality
Light in the Dark is the culmination of Gloria E. Anzaldúa's mature thought and the most comprehensive presentation of her philosophy. Focusing on aesthetics, ontology, epistemology, and ethics, it contains several developments in her many important theoretical contributions.
313 pages, Kindle Edition
First published September 7, 2015
142 people are currently reading
1786 people want to read
About the author
Gloria E. Anzaldúa
43 books780 followersGloria E. Anzaldúa was a scholar of Chicana cultural theory, feminist theory, and queer theory. She loosely based her best-known book, Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza, on her life growing up on the Mexican-Texas border and incorporated her lifelong feelings of social and cultural marginalization into her work.
When she was eleven, her family relocated to Hargill, Texas. Despite feeling discriminated against as a sixth-generation Tejana and as a female, and despite the death of her father from a car accident when she was fourteen, Anzaldúa still obtained her college education. In 1968, she received a B.A. in English, Art, and Secondary Education from Pan American University, and an M.A. in English and Education from the University of Texas at Austin. While in Austin, she joined politically active cultural poets and radical dramatists such as Ricardo Sanchez, and Hedwig Gorski.
After obtaining a Bachelor of Arts in English from the then Pan American University (now University of Texas-Pan American), Anzaldúa worked as a preschool and special education teacher. In 1977, she moved to California, where she supported herself through her writing, lectures, and occasional teaching stints about feminism, Chicano studies, and creative writing at San Francisco State University, the University of California, Santa Cruz, and Florida Atlantic University, among other universities.
(from Wikipedia)
See also: https://tshaonline.org/handbook/onlin...
When she was eleven, her family relocated to Hargill, Texas. Despite feeling discriminated against as a sixth-generation Tejana and as a female, and despite the death of her father from a car accident when she was fourteen, Anzaldúa still obtained her college education. In 1968, she received a B.A. in English, Art, and Secondary Education from Pan American University, and an M.A. in English and Education from the University of Texas at Austin. While in Austin, she joined politically active cultural poets and radical dramatists such as Ricardo Sanchez, and Hedwig Gorski.
After obtaining a Bachelor of Arts in English from the then Pan American University (now University of Texas-Pan American), Anzaldúa worked as a preschool and special education teacher. In 1977, she moved to California, where she supported herself through her writing, lectures, and occasional teaching stints about feminism, Chicano studies, and creative writing at San Francisco State University, the University of California, Santa Cruz, and Florida Atlantic University, among other universities.
(from Wikipedia)
See also: https://tshaonline.org/handbook/onlin...
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 44 reviews
February 5, 2017
This is a book published posthumously and compiled out of unfinished essays, arranged and notated by one of Anzaldúa's writer friends.
After having read only the Borderlands/La Frontera book by Anzaldúa and having it change my life, I thought I should read something of her's that was more contemporary. So I got this book. Anzaldúa addresses problematic things from La Frontera and other early work, notably how she appropriated an indigenous voice trying to find a direction/substance in her own. I'm recalling this on scattered memory though, so certainly go read for yourself what all she says.
I couldn't help but feel as though Anzaldúa began to repeat herself over and over, across subsequent paragraph and chapter. Like I said, this book was published from drafts found on her computer after she passed, and the editor includes lengthy context for why and how she arranged what she found into the book we end up reading. A quarter of the book is actually the back appendixes and footnotes, which I recommend reading along with the chapters (although it becomes tricky place-holding)...
It was relieving to see Anzaldúa's editing process and thought processes here across the chapters (some of which include email correspondences) . It's stressful to see that she used a lot of her energy managing her diabetes. As a writer, it's again relieving to get an understanding of how tedious and thorough her writing/editing process was.
But yes, I personally got the feeling that she kept trying to say something that just couldn't be whittled down. Something large. Something that, to me, became apparent the longer I read. Something that's not able to put expressed quickly or clearly in words. The fault of language.
Kudos to the editor. This was a thorough book.
After having read only the Borderlands/La Frontera book by Anzaldúa and having it change my life, I thought I should read something of her's that was more contemporary. So I got this book. Anzaldúa addresses problematic things from La Frontera and other early work, notably how she appropriated an indigenous voice trying to find a direction/substance in her own. I'm recalling this on scattered memory though, so certainly go read for yourself what all she says.
I couldn't help but feel as though Anzaldúa began to repeat herself over and over, across subsequent paragraph and chapter. Like I said, this book was published from drafts found on her computer after she passed, and the editor includes lengthy context for why and how she arranged what she found into the book we end up reading. A quarter of the book is actually the back appendixes and footnotes, which I recommend reading along with the chapters (although it becomes tricky place-holding)...
It was relieving to see Anzaldúa's editing process and thought processes here across the chapters (some of which include email correspondences) . It's stressful to see that she used a lot of her energy managing her diabetes. As a writer, it's again relieving to get an understanding of how tedious and thorough her writing/editing process was.
But yes, I personally got the feeling that she kept trying to say something that just couldn't be whittled down. Something large. Something that, to me, became apparent the longer I read. Something that's not able to put expressed quickly or clearly in words. The fault of language.
Kudos to the editor. This was a thorough book.
May 14, 2020
The last two chapters (about 65 pages plus notes) are worth a thousand stars, which greatly balances out the unfinished and loose character of the first four chapters or so. Definitely read the last two chapters first, especially if you are not an Anzaldúa scholar and are trying to figure out what she is about. One is a deeply powerful meditation on writing and the other is an account of Anzaldúa’s epistemology and theory of change.
There is an aura of love that surrounds the whole project—Gloria Anzaldúa’s loving dissertation work in the face of health struggles and other obstacles, and also AnaLouise Keating’s love as her comadre in the compilation of this work to bring a last statement to the world from Gloria. It’s such a shame that there is no flow between the segments outside the last two chapters, which leaves the constant feeling that concepts and stories have not been fully worked out, and that the really hard questions are only acknowledged parenthetically and not addressed head on. That’s the reality of untimely passage, though, and the two completed gems are essentially reading and grist for meditating on projects of self and world change.
There is an aura of love that surrounds the whole project—Gloria Anzaldúa’s loving dissertation work in the face of health struggles and other obstacles, and also AnaLouise Keating’s love as her comadre in the compilation of this work to bring a last statement to the world from Gloria. It’s such a shame that there is no flow between the segments outside the last two chapters, which leaves the constant feeling that concepts and stories have not been fully worked out, and that the really hard questions are only acknowledged parenthetically and not addressed head on. That’s the reality of untimely passage, though, and the two completed gems are essentially reading and grist for meditating on projects of self and world change.
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March 11, 2017I am not usually a mystic. In fact, the mystics usually drive me nuts, but God, I needed this book. I needed Gloria Anzaldúa and her questions (Is spending time in your company worth the reader's time? What will you give up in making holy the process of writing? Isn't an ally that which empowers you? Isn't an enemy not another person but the ignorance, fear, hate (los desconocimientos) that diminish us?), her insight (For cultural changes to occur, members of that culture must move through stages similar to those in the grieving process). And I needed her promises: This perspective from the cracks enables us to reconfigure ourselves as subjects outside the us/them binary. This could be our moment in history.
I have been told that Anzaldúa was much angrier in Borderlands/La Frontera, and maybe I would find less solace in her earlier writing. But this year I needed to hear that we are a we, that the rifts have always been there, but there is no particular reason to give up trying to heal them now. It will be a long, hard, multi-step process, but Activism is engaging in healing work. It means putting our hands in the dough and not merely thinking or talking about making tortillas. We don't have to do this same-shit-different-day ferris wheel. Prepare for new shit, folks, because it's a new day.
The final work of Anzaldúa's life was clearly unfinished. I do wonder if she would cringe over these second and third drafts and sketches in print. But I'm glad Keating took the initiative to put this out there. Clearly, it helped.
I have been told that Anzaldúa was much angrier in Borderlands/La Frontera, and maybe I would find less solace in her earlier writing. But this year I needed to hear that we are a we, that the rifts have always been there, but there is no particular reason to give up trying to heal them now. It will be a long, hard, multi-step process, but Activism is engaging in healing work. It means putting our hands in the dough and not merely thinking or talking about making tortillas. We don't have to do this same-shit-different-day ferris wheel. Prepare for new shit, folks, because it's a new day.
The final work of Anzaldúa's life was clearly unfinished. I do wonder if she would cringe over these second and third drafts and sketches in print. But I'm glad Keating took the initiative to put this out there. Clearly, it helped.
January 18, 2021
This is not a book for everyone, but I ended up really appreciating it. It took me a forever to get through it, as its prose is dense and weighty, but overall it was one of the most interesting I've read. Anzaldúa, a queer Chicacana scholar whose final text was published posthumously, tackles issues of race, writing process, art as catharsis, connectivity, labeling and rewriting ourselves anew. It is hopeful and at times, incredibly beautiful. It blends genres:introspective, researched, spiritual and poetic at once. Anzaldúa suggests that we break from cages of binary labels to forge a new community and existence that is fluid, free, and connected to our roots, in a "new tribalism" that can sustain us as fluid, moving individuals with constantly-evolving ideas about ourselves and the world. She shuns white dominant culture and demands, relies on "writing comrades" for support, and calls us all to "spiritual activism." And, her incredible translanguaging abilities - inserting Spanish words fluidly and easily into sentences - thrilled me. Dualities exist. Embrace process.
July 27, 2025
3.5 rounding to 4 because I was introduced to Anzaldua in class with ‘now let us shift…’ and ‘putting Coyolxauhqui back together’ so this book will forever be dear to me. However, the rest of the essays are pretty repetitive- probably because it’s a posthumous work. Crucial Anzaldua concepts such as conocomiento and, of course, nepantla are explained in length, and will forever be engrained in my thought.
November 29, 2022
I read this for my first year seminar in college, it was one of the first books that really resonated with me through the writing. With this being a introduction to Anzalduas work, I was plesently suprised for the first time in a long time I had really felt seen through the text. Being mixed myself it was extremely poetic to see the way she writes about the borderlands and this connection that is so personal to her. I just had my breath taken away with the writing.
April 19, 2022
Inspiring to say the least. This book made me want to write. Anzaldua reveals that even the most articulate writers have gone through grueling processes to refine their works- and still they’re never really finished.
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November 3, 2017818.5409 A6377 2015
December 21, 2024
Anzaldúa's ability to write Aztec mythology into contemporary literature is one of my favorite aspects of her work.
May 30, 2023
This was published posthumously so is a collection of drafts of essays, but I appreciate that she addressed problematic aspects of her earlier work, including her appropriation of indigeneity, and her later writing process.
March 31, 2018
I loved it! I am biased and I think everything she's written that I've ever read is magnificent. It is tricky when thinking about how it was published after her death and it was meant to be her dissertation. I have full belief that AnaLouise Keating is on top of her stuff and compiled this book to the best of her ability so I'm going to be up front and say that it didn't bother me at all while reading. I loved the pairing of Anzaldua's words with her drawings. This is her last book so it shows how she has grown, but also how she has gotten to this place. Through drawings and revisiting some her earlier ideas she's moving forward and trying to make sense in a dissertation like fashion and I think it still really works. She talks about how to get through life, but also how to get through life as a scholar and a writer. I feel like this is something I'll be revising again and again especially when thinking about writing and how to meld life experience and learned knowledge.
January 11, 2019
Gloria Anzaldua, now one of the ancestors, left us with so many prayers to stay in communion with her. Left us with so much insight, grace, knowledge, and strength. We can see past our sight and feel past our emotions to something more. A greater consciousness, a true liberation.
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January 11, 2017Reviewed here.
May 14, 2025
When I first opened Luz en lo Oscuro, I felt as dismembered as Coyolxauhqui (godess of the moon in Aztec mythic history). Reading about Anzaldúa’s theory of the healing process helped me a lot. I’m grateful I came across this book, one that feels surrounded by her love, and by the love of her friend and writing comrade who brought it to life after her passing.
Her writing style gives as much importance to form (mixing English and Spanish, weaving personal experience with theoretical thought) as it does to meaning. By placing herself, her struggles with life, death, identity, and illness at the center of her work, theory becomes something alive. Navigating through her writing process and personal struggles forced me to face my own darkest places, with the persistent itch to embrace them in order to move through trauma toward a state of wholeness.
Now, I find myself lost in Nepantla.
Her writing style gives as much importance to form (mixing English and Spanish, weaving personal experience with theoretical thought) as it does to meaning. By placing herself, her struggles with life, death, identity, and illness at the center of her work, theory becomes something alive. Navigating through her writing process and personal struggles forced me to face my own darkest places, with the persistent itch to embrace them in order to move through trauma toward a state of wholeness.
Now, I find myself lost in Nepantla.
December 12, 2023
This was my formal introduction to Gloria's work beyond snippets from "The Borderlands." The text was an assigned reading for a "Spirituality as Resistance" course I took towards the end of my major program. I came into the course expecting little from the readings, but Anzaldúa continues to prove why she remains a cornerstone of the modern Chicano canon. Although I did not necessarily follow nor agree with all of her philosophical ponderings, I appreciate the work for its exploration of our spiritual growth as a process of continuous fragmentation, that although frightening, resonated with my own contentious understanding of myself as a poor kid in an incredibly privileged environment. In short, Anzaldúa encouraged me to embrace vulnerability as a state of growth and not weakness.
May 12, 2023
While at times it reads of a dissertation that is overly academic, Anzaldua always manages to steer the discourse back into a hypnotic and inspiring convergence of philosophies and spirituality. There is a chapter about the creative process that is as motivational and unique as any that I’ve read. The final chapter about consciousness (conocimiento) literally tries to raise humankind’s collective consciousness and could help someone break free from their earth-bound chains. She often uses Spanish, but I never found it stopping me from understanding her. Anazaldua was a true luz en lo oscuro and spiritual force of American letters, and it’s a shame we lost her so soon.
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July 24, 2024Книга оставила у меня очень теплое впечатление. Это не художественная литература. Это эссе, размышления, этические, академические, культурологические заметки человека, принадлежащего другой культуре и другой нации, и пытающегося сохранить свою индивидуальность в академическом мире, в мире чужой не всегда дружественной и настроенной на понимание культуры. Это размышления человека глубоко и неизлечимо болеющего, мужественно борющегося с болезнью и пытающегося не дать болезни поглотить себя, внутренний мир, любимую работу.
August 8, 2025
Obsessed with this book! So grateful to AnaLouise Keating for compiling it. I love the way Anzaldúa explored herself and the world around her deeply, to the point of transcending the limits of her conscious mind and her body. I’m also currently writing my dissertation and every word about the agony of writing hit me!!! Her activism, her reflections on identity, her exploration of her heritage, her soul, her spirit are breathtaking. Truly ahead of her time.
Everyone needs to read more lesbian authors!!!
Everyone needs to read more lesbian authors!!!
January 22, 2022
I was really excited to finally read this book in its entirety but I couldn't not feel some disappointment. I love Anzaldua and one of my favourite texts of all times is the last chapter of the book ('Now Let Us Shift'), which I had previously read, but the other texts in the book didn't resonate particularly strongly with me. I found the editor's introduction and her inclusion of a lot of additional material pertaining to A's writing process very interesting.
March 17, 2025
Luz en lo oscuro has profoundly reshaped my understanding of the ego, superego, and id. Through its exploration of language, thought, and positionality, the text resonates deeply with my own ways of knowing. The book’s relatability—both in its content and the texture of its narrative—makes it a significant contribution to critical thought. Its relevance extends beyond any singular framework, ensuring its impact will endure across multiple realms of knowledge for years to come.
August 7, 2025
Neplanta: the in-between, the cracks, the middle ground
Neplantera: those who reside in the middle
Conocimiento: knowing, knowledge, insight. Learning
Coyolxauhqui: the moon goddess who was once shattered and reunited. Beauty in the process of shattering, and the cracks which come with it.
La naguala: a deeper interrelatedness
Nos/ostras: us/them, and the boundary or bridge between them
Nosotras: us
Neplantera: those who reside in the middle
Conocimiento: knowing, knowledge, insight. Learning
Coyolxauhqui: the moon goddess who was once shattered and reunited. Beauty in the process of shattering, and the cracks which come with it.
La naguala: a deeper interrelatedness
Nos/ostras: us/them, and the boundary or bridge between them
Nosotras: us
October 22, 2022
Un viaje profundo a las teorías que circundan el cuerpo de obra de la autora. Su bien está escrito en primera persona, la lectura es una especie de recorrido por las luces y sombras que cohabitan en el mundo interior de cada unx como latinoamericanxs y las conexiones identitarias e intersectadas que surgen de ello. Un relato para el alma.
December 8, 2022
I will have to take some time to let all the incredible insights of Anzaldúa - a true nepantlera - sink in, and will most likely be re-reading this book over and over again (as with the work of, e.g., Audre Lorde), but what I can say for now is that her work is, in one word, healing. Thank you Gloria.
January 1, 2019
A fascinating discussion of how we put ourselves together again after we've been broken apart by trauma. I've written a more extensive blog post here: https://blog.myquest-escottjones.com/...
September 21, 2019
Amazing. Some essays that make you think about the role of being Chicano in the US and the importance of writing as medicine. After reading borderlands, I feel this is a much more mature style from Alzaldua. Loved it.
July 19, 2020
Favorite quote: " Your goal is to cultivate an acute awareness of processes at work in your own psyche and to create symbols and patterns of its operations. The problem is that a process is arrested when you stop to watch it."
November 3, 2020
wow. very good. much to think about. this book is KEY for anyone interested in embodied social change and also just generally thoughts about how to be more connected with the world and how to be less of an asshole. the introduction by keating is genius as well.
February 21, 2024
Un excelente laburo de edición, que además brinda contexto. Felicito a Ana Louise , alta comadre de escritura, y a las compiladoras de Hekht Libros , unas genias que mantienen más viva que nunca la cosmovisión, forma de vivir, sentir y pensar la vida de Gloria.
April 30, 2025
Great work for a posthumous release. A bit overly heady in the spiritual realm at time but there are some amazing nuggets in here for the working artist, especially the mixed half latina ones. I think a lot of people in my scene could benefit from reading some of anzaldua’s work.
April 17, 2020
As a Latinx, queer, first generation American this book speaks to me.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 44 reviews