Moraga’s free public lecture on the eve of the summit is titled “A Small Nation of Remember: On the Road to Xicana Consciencia.” It will focus on the arts as avenues for fostering environmental and social justice. The talk will include a 30-minute video clip from a performance of Moraga’s latest play, “La Semilla Caminante” (“The Traveling Seed”).
A discussion and book signing will follow the lecture.
Moraga will participate in two summit events on Saturday, Mar. 5. One will address race, gender and sexuality studies. The other will engage her in a public dialogue with fellow writers Amber Hollibaugh, Waawaate Fobister and Tim'm West.
Born in Whittier, CA, Moraga is considered a leading voice of Chicana feminism. Her creative work spans racism, sexism, homophobia, pesticides’ environmental and human health impacts and the recovery of indigenous values and practices. She regards "Chicano/a," for example, as a more politicized reference to Mexican Americans. She favors "Xicana" as a usage to help reclaim indigenous heritage.
A prolific playwright, Moraga has published three volumes of drama: Heroes and Saints and Other Plays (1994), The Hungry Woman (2001) and Watsonville/Circle in the Dirt (2002). She is also the author of Loving in the War Years, which combines autobiographical prose and poetry with what she calls "theory in the flesh."
Moraga’s A Xicana Codex of Changing Consciousness: A Decade of Discourse is forthcoming this spring from Duke University Press. It blends an autobiographical narrative with “a dream-like exploration of a possible political future.”
Among the writer’s many awards are the Gerbode-Hewlett Foundation Grant for Playwriting (2009) and the United States Artist Rockefeller Fellowship for Literature (2008).
An Artist in Residence in the Department of Drama at Stanford University where she has worked for more than 10 years, Moraga currently shares a joint appointment with the Department of Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity.
Details of her free public lecture Mar. 3 are available from HSU’s Richard Bruce at 707/826-4491 and Richard.Bruce@humboldt.edu
Full information about HSU’s 2011 Social Justice Summit is posted at the Multicultural Center website http://www.humboldt.edu/summit or email Marylyn Paik-Nicely at mkp2@humboldt.edu.
The summit’s theme is “What Do You Want? Exploring Desire as a Means of Social Liberation.”