Cherríe Moraga (September 25, 1952) is a Chicana writer, feminist activist, poet, essayist, and playwright.

Quotes

• Both my essays and plays attempt to explore a political question or contradiction through the mind or the heart. By that I mean, both genres require analysis and a heart-felt honesty. But the essay is fundamentally one-voiced perspective, my own…
  • On her general distinctions between essays and plays in “VG Interview: Cherrie Moraga” (University of Minnesota: Voices from the Gap; January 2000)

• …The road that I have walked in my life as a mixed blood Chicana and as a lesbian has more and more put me…(pause) I am always the blood quantum that I am. But culturally and the life that I’ve lived and the values with which I’ve raised my own children , the relationship I have with my family and my partner and all those other things is pretty Chicano. So I don’t feel like it’s prescriptive – how one deals with being biracial. When I said I refuse the split, I really felt like typically what happens in a white dominated society is that you’re encouraged to assimilate anyway. So as a mixed blood person, you can get an incredible amount of benefits from that assimilation…
  • On debate regarding assimilation and cultural authenticity in “Interview with Cherrie Morraga [sic]” in Divisadero (Spring 2012)

• After publishing Loving in the War Years (1983) which was very autobiographical, my own story had finally been told on the page. This allowed space within me for character (some one other than myself to enter) my unconscious…
  • On her foray into drama in “VG Interview: Cherrie Moraga” (University of Minnesota: Voices from the Gap; January 2000)

• …It’s more that the conventionality of the model makes it a domesticized view of desire and also that really what we want is the same things as heterosexuals: the nuclear family, marriage; all of these components which from a feminist perspective we’ve already critiqued. Not every lesbian is a feminist, but if every lesbian were a feminist they shouldn’t want this either, because it really contradicts a whole movement that critiqued the nuclear family and the hierarchy of the nuclear family…
  • On how she believes that queer sexuality is at odds with the notion of gay marriage in “Interview with Cherrie Morraga [sic]” in Divisadero (Spring 2012)

• I don’t think femme-butch categories necessarily reproduce male-female gender relations and stereotypes about lesbians. I’m not sure Medea really thinks this either, but she does get angry at Luna when she perceives her as trying to act like a man and then resents Luna when she does not assume the power of a man. In other words, she is confused and a realistic, frightened character, afraid of losing her son and her land forever.
  • On her character Medea in The Hungry Woman in “VG Interview: Cherrie Moraga” (University of Minnesota: Voices from the Gap; January 2000)

• Class, I think its class above all else. Because the way class operates in this country is related to race. What I have noticed is that when white women and white lesbians relate to women of color what they’re really sort of connecting with is that they’re middle class. What really divides queer people in general not just lesbians is class. If you look at working class lesbians, including white women, that’s a really different world…
  • On how lesbianism is shaped by class in “Interview with Cherrie Morraga [sic]” in Divisadero (Spring 2012)

External links