Gloria Anzaldua as philosopher: The early years (1962-1987)

Its time that philosophers read Gloria Anzaldua as a philosopher. Scholars have been hinting at it for some time, but in describing her they still tend to choose the terms "theorist" "feminist," and "thinker" instead of 'philosopher." Anzaldua fits into all of these categories, but from her notes, we know that Anzaldua also thought of herself as a philosopher. In 2002, for instance, she called herself a "feminist-visionary-spiritual-activist-poet-philosopher fiction writer." This essay argues that we should grant Anzalclua's wish to be considered a philosopher in addition to the other appellations, and focuses on works that she read and wrote in the first half of her scholarly career, including the publication of Borderlands/La Frontera in 1987. The evidence for the claim that Anzaldua thought of herself as a philosopher is mostly archival, but some of it also appears in her published works. Once philosophers explicitly begin to recognize Anzaldua as a philosopher, comparisons between her and other already recognized philosophers will become fuller and bear more fruit.