Diana Carey

Theatre & American Cultures

Amissa Miller

20 October 2019

Cherrie Moraga: Chicana Icon

Cherrie Moraga is a Chicana lesbian artist and activist. Moraga was born on September

25th, 1952 in a town Southeast of Los Angeles called Whittier, California. She was born to a

white father and a Chicana mother. Along with her, her parents had two other children, both

older than her. The eldest was her brother, born in 1949, then her sister, born in 1951.

Her father’s name was Joseph Lawrence. His father, with the last name Slatter, was an

alcoholic and an itinerant worker on the trains in Canada. His mother divorced soon after Joseph

was born and got married to his stepfather, Lawrence. They were both actors in the Depression-

era Vaudeville Circuit. Joseph was born in San Francisco, CA, but grew up in Huntington Beach.

He lied about his age to join the military at the outbreak of World War II.

Her mother is named Elvira Moraga. Elvira’s mother and father were both from Arizona.

The region was inhabited by both the Yaqui and Papago peoples. There is no record of what

degree of Spanish or Indian blood the Moraga family had. Her father was a labor contractor for

farms, so her family moved around a lot. She had eight siblings, and she was born in the middle.

He would hire his children to work in the fields. Elvira was born in Santa Paula, CA in 1914.

During the Depression, her family moved back to Tijuana. Once they moved, her father died

rather quickly, so that left Elvira to support the family. She would work in the recently outlawed

casinos.
 Moraga’s parents met at a dance. Elvira married Joseph in 1948. She was eight years

older than him, and in a hurry to settle down and have children. While they were married, Joseph

worked for the railroad and Elvira took care of the children. In 1961, they moved to the San

Gabriel Valley, and Elvira began to work as well. She did piece work in factories, building

circuit boards.

The Moragas had a large and connected extended family. Her maternal grandmother

lived next door and raised two of her cousins. In total, Moraga had 35 cousins. Her sister,

brother, and her were the only mixed-race kids in the entire extended family, all of the cousins

had both a Mexican mother and father. Moraga felt extremely attached to her Mexican heritage

but also noticed the privilege her light skin gave her:

And I, even as a little girl, I recognized sort of this difference between how I was treated

and my Mexican classmates. That there were sort of assumptions about me being smarter,

and this encouragement that if you wanted to be college prep you hung out with the white

girls.1

This divide that was pushed upon her because of her light skin, influenced her to distance herself

from Chicana culture and her Chicana mother. She conformed to what Anglo culture wanted.

Her family was very Catholic. She went to a Catholic high school that had Dominican

nuns. This all-girls school and the nuns really influenced her Lesbianism. At the time of her high

school experience, there was a liberation happening in the church: nuns were leaving the nunnery

and changing the status quo on habits. This liberation affected the girls at the school. One of the

nuns, Sister Mara, was also principal at the time. Sister Mara had close relationships with a select

group of the students. One of Moraga’s friends, Donna, had a close relationship with Sister

1
(Moraga, I Just Wanted to be Brown)
Mara. When Donna graduated, she entered the nunnery. This led to Moraga becoming more

disillusioned with the Catholic Church. She said, “And I was furious, you know, because what I

knew was that it wasn’t God, it was that she was in love with this nun.”2 She didn’t like how

Sister Mara led these high schoolers to be so repressed.

Moraga got her bachelor’s degree in Los Angeles, at Immaculate Heart College, which

she described as “Radical Catholic.”3 College was when she wrote some of her first Lesbian

poetry. After graduation, she became an activist and moved to San Francisco. During this time

she got her MA in Feminist Writings from San Francisco State. While in San Francisco, she met

Gloria Anzaldúa and together wrote, A Bridge Called my Back: Writing by Radical Women of

Color in 1981.4

After finishing her education Moraga began to realize her deeper connection with her

mother. With years in the closet and repression, Moraga finally acknowledged her sexuality—

and with that a link to her heritage and family. She writes:

It wasn’t until I confronted my own lesbianism in the flesh, that my heartfelt

identification with and empathy for my mother’s oppression—due to being, poor,

uneducated, and Chicana—was realized. My lesbianism is the avenue through which I

have learned the most about silence and oppression.5

With coming out, Moraga began to grow in her feminism and embrace her identities as a lesbian

and a Chicana.

As a playwright, Cherrie Moraga trained under Maria Irene Fornes at the Latino

Playwright’s Lab at INTAR.

2
(Moraga, Voices of Feminism Oral History Project)
3
(PeoplePill)
4
(Moraga and Anzaldúa, A Bridge Called My Back: writings by radical women of color)
5
(Moraga, La Güera)
 Moraga’s identity as a Chicana has a tremendous impact on her style. She has been a

pioneer for other Chicanas in writing in a Chicana-specific style. Her work shows her struggle to

be part of heterosexist and male dominated Chicana/o community while being an activist for

feminist causes. In her plays and writings, Moraga incorporates Aztec mythology, both literal

and revised. This mythology is a common Chicana theme. It functions by providing a connection

to the heritage and homeland grounded in indigenous culture and symbolism and also

deconstructs negative images of women through revision. By refiguring mythology, Chicana

feminist writers line themselves in a historic and indigenous genealogy of women.6 Also,

Moraga’s embracing of indigenous symbolism destabilizes categories of race and class that come

about from her being mixed-race, she declares her Chicana identity.7

Cherrie Moraga’s Heroes and Saints follows a small California farming community

whose children are dying because of harmful chemicals being sprayed on the land in which farm

laborers work.8 The main character, Cerezita Valle, has been born with no limbs because her

pregnant mother worked in the contaminated fields. This character is inspired by a real person in

the farming community of McFarland, California, Moraga says in her author’s note at the start of

the play. She also says that the people playing “El Pueblo” should ideally be from the “local

Latino community.”9 This notion of drawing the ensemble from the local community is rooted in

activist principles, and teatro in the style of Luis Valdez.

The play opens on a scene with no dialogue, which teaches the audience about the

symbology of what happens onstage: children in calavera masks enter the vineyard and erect a

cross with a child’s corpse on it, then leave. This ritual crucifixion makes the dead child visible

6
(Blake)
7
(Moraga, The Last Generation: Prose & Poetry)
8&9
(Moraga, Heroes and Saints and Other Plays)
and meaningful. This symbol is rooted in Moraga’s catholic identity, one that is shared through a

lot of the Chicana/o community. The calaveras masks give the children a connection to the dead,

through Chicana/o culture and history.10 By making the dead visible, the children do not

guarantee change, but the bring the issue of the dead children into the public sphere. Their deaths

are not just death, but a community and society issue. Moraga uses these symbols, rooted in her

Chicana experience to create conditions for social change rather than passive acceptance.

Bibliography

Blake, Debra J. "Review: The Last Generation." The Journal of the Midwest Modern Language

Assocation, Vo. 28, No. 1 (Spring, 1995): 99-102.

Greenberg, Linda Margarita. "Learning from the Dead: Wounds, Women, and Activism in

Cherrie Moraga's Heroes and Saints." MELUS, VO. 34, No. 1 (Spring, 2009).

Moraga, Cherrie and Gloria Anzaldúa. A Bridge Called My Back: writings by radical women of

color. Watertown: Persephone Press, 1981.

Moraga, Cherrie. Heroes and Saints and Other Plays. Albuquerque : West End, 2002.

—. I Just Wanted to be Brown MAKER. 19 June 2013.

—. "La Güera." Madison, D. Soyini. The Woman That I Am: The Literature and Culture of

Contemporary Women of Color. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1994.

—. The Last Generation: Prose & Poetry. Boston: SOuth ENd Press, 1993.

—. Voices of Feminism Oral History Project Kelly Anderson. 6&7 July 2005.

PeoplePill. https://peoplepill.com/people/cherrie-moraga/ 2019.

10
(Greenberg)