Native Country of the Heart
​Cherríe Moraga

From the beloved queer Chicana feminist writer Cherríe Moraga, Native Country of the Heart is a memoir told in parallel with the memoir of her Mexican mother, Elvira. Elvira is the foundational stone on which Moraga builds her own Chicana feminism and family, a woman whose beauty, rage, and fuerza incansable were unmatched in the eyes of Cherríe. Cherríe Moraga’s life story is one of reclamation and resistance: reclaiming her indigenous Californian and Mexican roots in a Gringo world, while resisting the shame and guilt forged by the patriarchy and religion of her family’s culture.

With Spanish words and phrases infusing her prose with a poetic precision that only the two languages combined can achieve, Moraga takes us from the 1930’s in Tijuana, Mexico to the 1960’s in San Gabriel, California, and beyond. Alzheimer’s disease eventually takes the wheel of Elvira’s life, both incapacitating her at a functional level while simultaneously revealing her most repressed desires and authentic self. Cherríe, becoming a mother to her deteriorating parents, grapples with the feat of relinquishing control and surrendering her mother through the haze of dementia to the spirits of her ancestors. 

From her childhood experience of being isolated and fearful that her identity might be the thing that tears her family apart, to her mixed-blood experience of feeling always on the edge of two cultures, to the prolonged, painful loss of the matriarchs of her family, Moraga’s storytelling embodies both an immense grief and a powerful life-force.

Cherríe Moraga is a writer and activist among the first to introduce concepts of Chicana feminism and the intersectionality of race, gender, and sexuality into the dominant cultural narrative of feminism. She co-edited the anthology This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color (1981) and co-founded Kitchen Table: Women of Color Press, the first publisher committed to highlighting the work of women of color in the US. She also co-founded Las Maestras: Center for Xicana Indigenous Thought and Art Practice. 

Native Country of the Heart is a publication by the Ferrar, Straus and Giroux. Click here to purchase.
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Reviewed by
Samantha Olvera
​​6/25/2019

Samantha Olvera is a freelance writer, book reviewer, and avid reader of diverse literature. She currently resides in Costa Rica, where she farms tropical fruits and teaches about sustainability. She is passionate about intersectional feminism, food systems and regenerative agriculture, and lifting up underrepresented voices. 

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