SOURCE: Torres, Hector A. “Genre, Gender, and Mestiza Consciousness in the Work of Gloria Anzaldúa.” Contemporary Literary Criticism 200, edited by Jeffrey William Hunter, 2004.

In the following essay, specially commissioned for Contemporary Literary Criticism, Torres situates Anzaldúa's work within the cultural context of postmodernism via the literary and philosophical concept of mestizaje.

“… this is where the new mestiza comes in … now, in these postmodern times we do not have to adhere to a windows and doors closed identity that remains in the Chicano community. We can be transcultural. The very concept of mestizaje is this mixture of cultures and we can do that intellectually so that the mestiza is wide open: it's okay for the mestiza to be reading theories of the major, theories of the minor, world literature, world feminism. But not everybody is that stage. There are still some feminists who still need this enclosed...