Making Face, Making Soul/Haciendo Caras

A bold collection of creative pieces and theoretical essays by women of color. Making Face, Making Soul includes over 70 works by poets, writers, artists, and activists such as Paula Gunn Allen, Norma Alarcón, Gloria Anzaldúa, Lorna Dee Cervantes, Barbara Christian, Chrystos, Sandra Cisneros, Michelle Cliff, Judith Ortiz Cofer, Elena Creef, Audre Lorde, María Lugones, Jewelle Gomez, Joy Harjo, bell hooks, June Jordan, Trinh T. Minh-ha, Janice Mirikitani, Pat Mora, Cherríe Moraga, Pat Parker, Chela Sandoval, Barbara Smith, Mitsuye Yamada, and Alice Walker. Anzaldúa's unusual combination of scholarly research, folk tales, personal narrative, poetry and political manifesto, forms a powerful and cohesive whole. -- San Francisco Chronicle Review Anzaldúa is an accomplished writer, able to marshal passionate intensity in support of her attempt to do away with dualities. -- Journal of the Southwest She has chosen the most difficult task; that of mediating cultures without concession or dilution. -- Women's Review of Books Propelled by a strong indigenist current, Anzaldúa assumes a prophetic voice to create--by mythic, spiritual, mystic, intuitive and imaginative means--a new vision... -- The Americas Review Many of the best pieces...combine the theoretical essay with poetry and personal narration, reflecting a breadth of emotion that most people keep tightly concealed. This is the book's primary purpose, to give voice to thoughts and feelings which have been privatized and occluded. -- Publishers Weekly Anzaldúa brings a poetic style steeped in Chicano/Chicana history and Aztec myth to bear upon issues that are too often treated in dry, theoretical terms...subverts the white middle-class perspective of much mainstream feminism with analysis, testimony, story, and song. -- Utne Reader