Andrea J. Pitts, "Nos/Otras: Gloria E. Anzaldúa, Multiplicitous Agency, and Resistance" (SUNY Press, 2021)
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What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
Welcome to the New Books Network.
Andrea Pitts, welcome to New Books and Philosophy. Hi, thank you. Will you start by telling us a bit about yourself and your background as a philosopher and how you came to write this book, how it was informed by prior work, and how you came to center Anzaldúa in your thinking?
Yeah, so first, yes. Hi, Sarah. It's a real pleasure to speak with you here on the New Books Network. I'm I'm a big fan of the series and have learned a lot from these interviews.
Who is Andrea J. Pitts and how did her personal background lead to writing *Nos/Otras*?
So I really appreciate the work that you all are doing to make these podcasts available. And I want to first thank you for that work and for this invitation to chat today. Also, as an aside, it's always nice to connect with you, Sarah, in particular, given our previous connections. So full disclosure to your listeners, Sarah and I attended grad school together and I think first met maybe like over 10 years ago. That sounds right.
Yeah.
So anyway, so always great to connect with you, Sarah. So, okay. So regarding my background and interest for this book, I'm I really began reading Anzaldúa before I came to philosophy. So my interest in her work, I think somewhat predates my training as a philosopher. So I was one of those young people who picked up the edited collection by Sri Moraga and Gloria Anzaldúa, This Bridge Called My Back, and was just totally transformed by it. So in particular, I remember being assigned chapters from that collection, I think in one of my women's and gender studies classes, and then just being totally floored by Moraga's poem For the Color of My Mother and her essay La Huera, which included her descriptions of being
of mixed racial and cultural parentage, and in her case, a Mexican mother and a white father. And I was totally taken aback by reading someone write about a world of experiences that appeared to track a lot of what I found confusing and frustrating and also affirming in my own childhood and young adulthood as a child of a Panamanian mother and a white father. And so later, after I ended up majoring in philosophy, and in my senior year of undergrad, I remember sitting on the floor of the library and finding this peculiar little book titled Singing in the Fire. Yeah, a book about women philosophers describing their experiences in the profession. And it was there that I, you know, learned about Linda Martine Alcoff and Ophelia Schutta.
And then through Linda's work, a fellow Panamanian American feminist philosopher, I also found another author whose writings and ideas on race, gender and and forms of injustice seemed to kind of track some of my own sensibilities. And I knew I wanted to work with Latina and Latin American feminist philosophers around that time. And I was really fortunate to go work with the prolific Cuban-American feminist philosopher Opelia Chuta at the University of South Florida in Tampa. And there, Ofelia really allowed me to conduct independent research on Anzaldúa. And I took classes with Ofelia on Latin American philosophy and also on Nietzsche. And kind of also beginning around my second year of grad school, I started regularly attending the Roundtable on Latina Feminism, which was organized annually by Mariana Ortega, who's another Central American feminist philosopher who's been, you know, who's been and continues to be pivotal in my life and career.
So I think it was largely through Mariana and Ofelia's mentorship that during grad school, I started taking Ansel Dua's work pretty seriously. And this was true not only due to the leading Latina and Latin American philosophers in my life, but also due to my work also with the Latin American and Caribbean historian at the time, Adriana Novoa, who I continue to work with closely today. And as a historian, Adriana has had plenty of criticisms of Anzaldúa. But she also helped me, I think, foster a love and appreciation for cultural history. And I see that as an important facet of some of the work that I continue to do today. So just thinking now the themes from this book in particular, I started exploring strands of collective agency within Ansel Dua's work, as I mentioned, at the Roundtable on Latina Feminism, which is now called the Latina Latinx Feminism's Roundtable.
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Chapters
7 chapters
1
What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
0:01–0:33
2
Who is Andrea J. Pitts and how did her personal background lead to writing *Nos/Otras*?
0:33–8:09
3
What early readings and mentors shaped Pitts’s interest in Gloria Anzaldúa?
8:09–20:35
4
How does the concept of *nos/otras* emerge from Anzaldúa’s later writings?
20:35–34:31
5
In what ways does Pitts link *nos/otras* to multiplicitous agency and collective resistance?
34:31–48:22
6
How are ambivalence and moral accountability framed through Anzaldúa’s border‑land metaphors?
48:22–56:21
7
What critiques from disability, trans, and Indigenous scholars are addressed, and how are they navigated?
56:21–1:00:02
Speakers
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