The Last Generation: Prose and Poetry

Rating:
Summary: A Complex and Problematic Exposition
Review: Moraga's second anthology of essays, poems, and prose has its moments, especially in the fictional entries, which are humorous, generous, and touching. Ten years have passed between Moraga's groundbreaking (and breathtaking) debut, 1983's Loving in the War Years. During that time, she became arguably the most preeminent Chicana feminist writer outside of the academy. The Last Generation, while eagerly awaited, ultimately disappoints, primarily through Moraga's struggled reconstitution of Chicana/o cultural nationalism with a queer bent. The anthology's most touted essay, "Queer Aztlan," is a dangerously authoritarian return of the repressed. Moraga, who challenged the essential Chicano of the sixties, has dressed up that old bugaboo, the essential subject, in queer cloth and calls it une nouveaute. Mais, c'est pas ca. Moraga's Queer Aztlan, with its calls to blood and land, is chillingly reminiscent of mid-twentieth century fascism, a fact that has been overlooked by her historically myopic acolytes. Last Generation is the sepulchre under which a promising talent lies: the promise of Moraga's early visions of a radically transformed Chicanismo. In this volume, she offers us a different image of the transformed writer/activist. From outsider to insider, Moraga can now make the leap into the essentialism she once criticized. At many points polemic, always self-indulgent, Moraga's collection serves as an interesting barometer of the acceptance and mainstreaming of Chicana feminist discourse within the cultural nationalist frame, with a subsequent loss both of rhetorical power and political progressiveness. In light of this, and above all, this work needs to be read critically.