SOURCE: Carter-Sanborn, Kristin. “Tongue-Tied: Chicana Feminist Textual Politics and the Future of Chicano/Chicana Studies.” Genre 32, nos. 1-2 (spring-summer 1999): 73-83.

In the following essay, Carter-Sanborn addresses the tension between white feminism and Chicano/a nationalism evident in the writings of some Chicana authors and discusses how the works of Cherríe Moraga and Ana Castillo transcend this dualism.

Few who are acquainted with recent Chicana literary and critical production would dispute its status as an activity with political implications and consequences. What gets elided in begging the question of politics, however, is the very real, specific, yet contingent set of pressures felt by Chicana writers who consider their work to be part of a greater political project. Chicana feminist political identity must be subject to the process Ernesto Laclau has described, in which the “conditions of existence” and “dislocating adulterations” of social and political identity are risked and...