Light in the Dark/Luz en lo Oscuro: Rewriting Identity, Spirituality, Reality

Gloria Anzaldúa is best known for her iconic 1987 text, Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza, which ignited overdue discussions about women of colors’ distinct oppressions and modes of resistance in feminist thought, critical race studies, queer theory, and beyond. Her posthumously published 2015 book, Light in the Dark/Luz en lo Oscuro: Rewriting Identity, Spirituality, Reality, has the potential to function similarly by directing scholarly imaginations toward novel means of liberatory analysis and intervention. An ambitious undertaking whereby Anzaldúa outlines her most developed ideas on aesthetics, ontology, epistemology, and ethics, Light in the Dark contains multiple transformative theories—some new, and others reworked from earlier writings—intended to illuminate possible solutions to our “social sickness,” strategies for “the healing of our wounds,” both personal and collective (19). These theories include the Coyolxauhqui imperative, new tribalism, spiritual activism, and many others.