Published online by Cambridge University Press: 14 November 2013
My first course in women's studies was Gloria Anzaldúa's “Women of Color in the U.S.” I took the course with a group of women with whom I shared a house in Santa Cruz. We were Chicana and Filipina, all of us activists in MEChA (Movimiento Estudiantil Chicano de Aztlán) and APISA (Asian/Pacific Island Student Association). That spring quarter, we worked our way through Anzaldúa's recently published Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza while also reading essays by Audre Lorde, Norma Alarcón, Janice Mirikitani, and Chela Sandoval. We read lesbian erotica by Azucena Coronel and listened to Cherríe Moraga read poetry. Along with my housemates and activist friends, I spent the quarter reading and talking and learning about how to think more deeply about questions of gender, race, and sexuality and about how these categories helped to shape my personal, intellectual, and political identity.