Biography of Cherrie Moraga

Cherrie Moraga was born in Los Angeles on September 25, 1952. Moraga is a Chicana poet, playwright, essayist, and activist. She currently teaches at the University of California, Santa Barbara where she also started Las Maestras: Center for Xicana Indigenous Thought and Art Practice.

Moraga coedited, with Gloria Anzaldúa, the feminist anthology This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color. Moraga is the author of several collections, including A Xicana Codex of Changing Consciousness and Waiting in the Wings: Portrait of a Queer Motherhood. As a playwright, Moraga has published three volumes of plays: Heroes & Saints & Other Plays; The Hungry Woman/Heart of the Earth, and Watsonville/Circle in the Dirt. She received the National Endowment for the Arts Theater Playwrights' Fellowship in 1993 and the PEN West Award, the Critics Circle Award, and two Fund for New American Plays Awards.

Moraga is a founding member of La RED Xicana Indígena, “an advocacy network of Xicanas working in education, the arts, spiritual practice, and indigenous women’s rights.”


Study Guides on Works by Cherrie Moraga