By Veronique Bergeron

Acclaimed Chicana feminist, author, and activist Cherríe Moraga spoke to a crowd of approximately 100 students, staff, faculty and community members in Weyerhaeuser Chapel on Thursday, March 22. The event was planned in conjunction with Women’s History Month and centered around the theme of “Women Create: Art, Identity and Social Change.”

Moraga read from a forthcoming collection of essays. One essay detailed her experience as the “Artist-in-Residence” at her child’s elementary school directing a play that explored colonialism and American identity. Another essay centered around the liberation of men and its connection to feminism.
During the discussion session after her reading, Moraga addressed questions regarding the tension between her work and her position as a professor at Stanford University. “It’s a good gig,” she said. She acknowledged, however, that the time she gives to her art, scholarship and writing is never enough.

“[I was] hungry for one whole story that feels true to me,” Moraga said of her role as an artist and writer.

Moraga co-edited the ground-breaking feminist text “This Bridge Called My Back: Writings By Radical Women of Color” and wrote “Loving In the War Years.” She is also a recipient of the National Endowment for the Arts’ Theatre Playwrights’ Fellowship and the Artist-in-Residence in the Departments of Drama and Spanish & Portuguese at Stanford University.