The 's Borderlands / La Frontera

Gloria Anzaldúa was a Texas-born, lesbian, Latina, feminist, that wrote about many of her personal experiences and views of the diverse background she grew up in. Growing up a certain culture at home and being in a country with a different culture, brings along a lot of self-identifying issues. Gloria Anzaldúa uses various strategies and languages to write this powerful piece by code-switching, quoting others, diction, and rhetorical questions. Anzaldúa’s “How to Tame a Wild Tongue” speaks about the social issues that Latinos face involving identity, language, and sexism.

Caminero-Santangelo, Marta. 2007. On Latinidad: U.S. Latino Literature and the Construction of Ethnicity. Gainesville, FL: University Press of Florida.

The flash collection Sudden Fiction Latino: Short-short stories from the United States and Latin America brings together Latino and Latin American authors who might otherwise remain separated by borders, recognition, nationality, age, gender, and even language. Some only write in English, others in Spanish and still others in Portuguese. The collection allows readers, whether they share a cultural consciousness with these authors or not, to travel to and intimately experience many diverse worlds. Worlds, or stories, that seem to be working to define the indefinable--what it means to be Latino or Latin American. And it seems that anytime we try to define a group of people, even when it is within the context of a literary collection, it becomes something political.

Anzaldúa recounts her experience growing up in a community where her Chicana culture wasn’t widely accepted. She would be punished for speaking the language her culture influenced to create a language, which corresponds to a way of life. In Gloria Anzaldúa’s “How to Tame a Wild Tongue” the variety of languages helps her compare, contrast and define her argument of the distinguished languages concerning her Chicana identity.

Edited by several scholars such as Gabriella F. Arredondo, Aída Hurtado, Norma Klahn, Olga Nájera-Ramírez, and Patricia Zanella, this book in particular highlights the development of Chicana identities in the twentieth century by showing “how Chicana feminist writings move discourse beyond binaries and toward intersectionality and hybridity” (Arredondo e.al. 2). What is interesting is how the feminist scholars in this book used different epistemologies and methods in capturing the experiences of the Chicanas which include oral histories, poetry, theatrical performance, painting, dance, music and social science survey. Some of the contributors also combine “analytical tools and cross disciplinary boundaries” (5). The approaches used are very unique as they enables to unravel the Chicana experiences thoroughly and disrupt “the notion of Chicana identity as monolithic and homogeneous” (6). Also, the format of the book which presents articles and then the responses by another activist or scholars offers a very distinct way of presenting critical and provocative analysis. Such format allows the editors to “reaffirm the tensions and creativity of individual and group consciousness that underlie Chicana feminism and scholarship” (Salas 122). From this edited volume, I choose three articles along with their responses. Those articles are Cartohistografía: Continente de una voz/Cartohistography: One Voice’s Continent by Elba Rosario Sánchez (response: Translating Herstory: A Reading

Although I can’t specifically relate to Gloria Anzaldúa’s struggle between her languages in “How to Tame a Wild Tongue,” I can relate to her “kind of dual identity” in which she identifies with neither Anglo-American cultural values nor Mexican cultural values (1566). Being half white, half Chinese, I struggle identifying as either identity, especially because my mom (who is Chinese) never learned Cantonese and largely became Americanized in her childhood. It’s an uncomfortable position to be in when racial and ethnic identity are so significant in America and when I must interact with the world as part of both the majority and the marginalized. Considering my own struggle and the conflict Anzaldúa describes, it became clearer to me the way race relations in American not only marginalize people of color but train our consciousnesses to damage ourselves. Before I turn back to Anzaldúa, a novel I’ve recently read, William Godwin’s Caleb Williams has also been on my mind, particularly in Godwin’s portrayal of how police surveillance transforms us into agents of our own oppression. Although Caleb is a white man, he also experiences a split consciousness as his values and characteristics are whittled away by the paranoia of constant surveillance.

Gloria Anzaldúa writes of a Utopic frame of mind, the borderlands created in and lived in by the new mestiza. She describes the preexisting natures of the Anglos, Mexicanos, and Chicanos as seen around the southwest U.S. / Mexican border, indicative of the nations at large. She also probes the borders of language, sexuality, psychology and spirituality. Anzaldúa presents this information in various identifiable ways including the autobiography, historical/informative essay, and poetry. What is unique to Anzaldúa is her ability to weave a ‘perfect’ kind of compromised state of mind that melds together the preexisting cultures while simultaneously formulating a fusion of genres that stretches previously

As a result, Anzaldua illustrates her hardship to the attention of an English speaker as an audience. Throughout the reading, she consistently switches from English to Spanish in many paragraphs forcing a non-Spanish speaker, such as myself, to look up translations an order to make sense of the story. An example of this would be when her mother expresses her disappointment saying, “I want you to speak English. PA hallar buen trabajo hablas ingles con un accent” (206). By forcing this task on the audience, this allows a sense of empathy and understanding of author’s struggles of what she had to go through growing up. She had spoken English but is still sadly looked upon from her mother due to having Spanish “accent”, that with this accent putting her through school is pointless.

Anzaldua identifies as a part of an emerging new mestiza consciousness and community, which strives to move beyond simple dualistic thinking and endeavors to “act and not react” This important contradiction lies at the heart of Anzaldua’s analysis. “From this racial, ideological, cultural, and biological cross-pollicization, an ‘alien’ consciousness is presently in the making — a new mestiza consciousness, una conciencia de mujer. It is a consciousness of the Borderlands.” (Anzaldua, 1987, 420). Anzaldua’s proposition of the new consciousness mediates social relations, revolutionary social change, and its wider relevance to feminist theory through discussions of the Borderlands and its implications for ‘identity.’

In the reading of “Borderlands/ La Frontera” by Gloria Anzaladúa we explore the idea of breaking down our own physical borders as well as invisible borders within as we connect with the narrator and her experiences. We can draw many parallels between the reading of Borderlands and “A Different Mirror” by Ronald Takaki. Both readings allow immerse you in the life of being the Other in society, through stories they share, emotions expressed through their writings and by using evidence of dominance between races. In Takaki we see the Other as a race, whereas in Borderlands, we see it as more than just race, it is an identity. In Borderlands we see a prime example of this when she says “As a lesbian I have no race…I am all races because there is a queer of me in all races” (Page 181 “Borderlands/ La Frontera” by Gloria Anzaladúa). Takaki describes Other as “different, inferior, and unassimilable” (Page 4 “A Different Mirror” by Ronald Takaki). As the readings develop, we are given the opportunity to put ourselves in the Others shoes allowing you to sympathize with those who may be “different.” It is as if the authors do this on purpose, especially for the white cultures who in the Others eyes like to put themselves on a pedestal. Though many may argue with this idea of the Other, it is something that people of all races should think about so that we can effectively work together to break down the borders we have built between cultures, sexualities, spiritualities and

In Gloria Anzaldúa article “How to Tame a Wild Tongue,” she shows us how different worlds so close can be so different. Anzaldúa shows that people have restricted freedom in society by the social norms set in them. Anzaldúa pressed her awareness and distraught on how people treat her depending on the type of language she uses. She also explains some of her emotions towards the way people are like with speaking and listening to accents. The article is how Anzaldúa explains how culture and accent shapes a person’s identity by being controlled and oppressed to fit into the social norms, which is how she creates cracks using language and code switching.

Yet Moraga writing style is very difficult to comprehend at first, due to the barrier that she create by using Spanish and English. Moraga’s choice of words force the reader’s flow to be caught off guard and roots it to focus on every details. She blends both languages together that challenge the reader to understand the multiple categories of her. As she write her struggles to define herself in relation to others, (mainly in the Chicana/o community), she also makes it a challenge for the readers to fully access her trials at first read. In the article “Cherríe Moraga’s Loving in the War Years: lo que nunca pasó por sus labios: Auto-ethnography of the “New Mestiza,” Cloud states that “the placement of her own personal experiences within the context of her community enables Moraga to capture successfully the struggle of an entire people for individual and collective autonomy” (86). Clouds argue that Moraga purposely writes for an “all in one” perspective that can be very challenging for reader to understand. She admits that, “Loving in the War Years first part speaks to the confusion and personal struggle that characterized its author’s formative years, no more so than in its poetic parts. Much of the inner turmoil that pervades Moraga’s self-portrayal revolves around the collision course that is the confluence of her two ethnic identities: Chicana and American” (91). With this reason, the only way that Moraga could have directly and explicitly share her

What I'm going to talk about is four major themes from the book, Borderlands La Frontera by Gloria Anzaldúa. The four major themes I chose to talk about are first, how you shouldn’t be ashamed of yourself, then how Anzaldúa shows deviant behavior throughout the book, also, how she found herself through poetry, and lastly, America’s melting pot.

One must learn to adjust themselves to the dominant culture while having their own cultural values, Anzaldua called it “plural personality”. Mestiza for her is possibility of thinking at border length. Rejection of binary thinking of border and it system of diffraction. All cultural identity is built in the story that is being told which passed down culture, identity and traditions. This encourages tolerance of ambiguity. There’s no Mestiza for her because it’s tainted and forged through power and domination. It’s a combination of inequality, rejection of traditional culture and the acceptance to create a new culture that gives rise to a new consciousness. Anzalua’s “new” identity is very significant to idea to a certain extent, other than defining herself according to society’s definition of what constitutes being Hispanic

The border between the United States of America and Mexico always had been always a theme for a lot of discussions. And, in the book “Sunshine/Noir II” Juanita Lopez and Michael Cheno described, through texts, their point of view about the topic. Both authors represent that the control of the border has become way more restrict and militarized. In that sense, Michael Wickert presents his idea in a poem form, text named “The border Is a Fight”, that describes the dramas of a Mexican family that has to cross the border every day in a hope to get a better future. Whereas, Juanita Lopez demonstrates it through an essay that uses personal narratives of the author’s relatives to illustrate her point of view. Therefore, the both authors exploit their point of views using different text forms, and figurative images, like metaphors and personification, for delivering their ideas in the way they do.