Playwright, poet, essayist delivers the Department of Literature Robert C. Elliott Lecture

CHERRÍE MORAGA

"A SMALL NATION OF REMEMBER: ON THE ROAD TO XICANA CONSCIENCIA”

Thursday, April 21, 2011
7:00-8:30 p.m.
UC San Diego
Price Center West Ballroom B

Reception and Book Signing follows at the Cross Cultural Center

Cherrie Moraga will present a short video excerpt from her recent performance work, "La Semilla Caminante/The Traveling Seed," followed by a reading from her new collection of writings, A Xicana Codex of Changing Consciousness. The presentation will include a Q & A with the audience and a book signing with the author.

Cherríe L. Moraga is playwright, poet, and essayist whose plays and publications have received national recognition. She was the co-editor of This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color, which won the Before Columbus American Book Award in 1986. She is the author of the now classic Loving in the War Years: Lo Que Nunca Pasó Por Sus Labios (1983/2003) and The Last Generation (1993), published by South End Press. This year Moraga also completed a new collection of writings -- A Xicana Codex of Changing Consciousness: A Decade of Discourse -- to be published by Duke University Press in Spring 2011.

Moraga has also published three volumes of theatrical works. They include: Heroes and Saints and Other Plays (1994), Watsonville/Circle in the Dirt (2002), and The Hungry Woman (2001). In 2010, WEP will publish a volume of Moraga’s children’s plays, entitled Warriors of the Spirit. A San Francisco Bay Area playwright, Moraga has premiered her work at Theatre Artaud, Theatre Rhinoceros, the Eureka Theatre, and Brava Theater Center. Brava's production of "Heroes and Saints" in 1992 received numerous awards for best original script, including the Drama-logue and Critic Circles Awards and the Pen West Award. On July 30, 2010, Moraga's "Digging Up the Dirt" opened to a sold-out audience five-week run at Breath of Fire Latina Theater in Orange County, CA, in a co-production with See-what (Cihuat) Productions.

Moraga has served as an Artist in Residence in the Department of Drama at Stanford University and currently also shares a joint appointment with Comparative Studies in Race & Ethnicity. She teaches Creative Writing, Xicana-Indigenous Performance, Latino/Queer Performance, Indigenous Identity in Diaspora in the Arts and Playwriting. She is proud to be a founding member of La Red Xicana Indígena, a network of Xicanas organizing in the area of social change through international exchange, indigenous political education, spiritual practice, and grass roots organizing.

Sponsored by:

Department of Literature Robert C. Elliott Memorial Fund
Dean, Division of Arts & Humanities
The 50th Anniversary Executive Committee
Chicano/a~Latino/a Arts & Humanities Program
Critical Gender Studies
Cross-Cultural Center
LGBT Resource Center