Cherríe Moraga (born September 25, 1952) is a Chicana feminist, writer, activist, poet, essayist, and playwright. She is part of the faculty at the University of California, Santa Barbara in the Department of English. Moraga is also a founding member of the social justice activist group La Red Chicana Indígena which is an organization of Chicanas fighting for education, culture rights, and Indigenous Rights. Early life Moraga was born on September 25, 1952 in Los Angeles County, California. In her article "La Guera" Moraga wrote of her experiences growing up as a child of a white man and a Mexican woman, stating that "it is frightening to acknowledge that I have internalized a racism and classism, where the object of oppression not only someone outside of my skin, but the someone inside my skin." Moraga has cited her mother as her main inspiration to become a writer, stating that she was an eminent storyteller. She attended Immaculate Heart College in Los Angeles, gaining a graduated bachelor's degree in English in 1974. Soon after attending, she enrolled in a writing class at the Women's Building and produced her first lesbian poems. In 1977 she moved to San Francisco where she supported herself as a waitress, became politically active as a burgeoning feminist, and discovered the feminism of women of color. She earned her master's degree in Feminist Writings from San Francisco State University in 1980. Writing and themes Moraga has been credited as one of the few writers to write and introduce the theory of Chicana lesbianism. Themes in her writing include the intersections of gender, sexuality, and race, particularly in cultural production by women of color. Moraga's work was featured in tatiana de la tierra's Latina lesbian magazine Esto no tiene nombre, which sought to inform and empower Latina lesbians through the work of writers like Moraga. Sexuality Moraga is openly gay, having come out as a lesbian after her college years. In "La Guera" Moraga compared the discrimination she experienced as a lesbian to her mother's experiences being a poor, uneducated Mexican woman, stating that “My lesbianism is the avenue through which I have learned the most about silence and oppression, and it continues to be the most tactile reminder to me that we are not free human beings”. After coming out, Moraga began writing more heavily and became involved with the feminist movement. In Loving in the War