Internationally acclaimed artist, Cherríe Moraga delivers a poetic, heart-wrenching reflection on her mother’s complex relationship to America and the pioneering, queer Latina feminist daughter who continues down the path of identity forged by her battle-tested matriarch.

As a child, Elvira was hired out as a child by her own father to pick cotton in California’s Imperial Valley. Leaving California in the late-1920s, she became a cigarette girl in Jazz-age Tijuana, meeting a wealthy white man who taught her life lesson of power, sex, and opportunity. In her old age, she suffered under the yoke of Alzheimer’s. In relief against the extraordinary story of Elvira’s life, is Cherríe’s own journey. Through Native Country of the Heart and her mother’s trials, Moraga traces her own self-discovery of her gender-queer body and Lesbian identity, as well as her passion for activism and the history of the pueblo.

Meet Cherríe Moraga – co-editor of This Bridge Called My Back and cofounder of Kitchen Table: Women of Color Press – one of the most influential artist activists working today.

Photo Credit: Daniella Rossell.