To live sin fronteras

To survive the Borderlands

you must live sin fronteras
be a crossroads.

I recently read Gloria Anzaldúa's book Borderlands / La Frontera and found that it addresses a lot of the issues that seem prevalent in discussions of authorial identity. The book is an autobiography of sorts. Anzaldúa grew up in Southern Texas along the U.S. and Mexican border, and she distinguishes herself as Chicana, Mexican-American. Due to the physical location of her home, she discusses the idea of a border that separates a first-world country from a third-world country, which leads her to examine her personal cultural placement and the various kinds of borders that form binary oppositions.

In her chapter "La conciencia de la mestiza / Towards a New Consciousness," Anzaldúa discusses that reaction is both "limited by, and dependent on, what it is reacting against" (100). As a Mexican-American and lesbian woman, she feels that she has had to resist aspects of white patriarchal society for much of her life, but she creates the image that she cannot place herself on the riverbank opposite from these cultures. Instead, "on our way to a new consciousness, we will have to leave the opposite bank, the split between the two mortal combatants somehow healed so that we are on both shores at once" (100). The important approach to resolving such divisive dualities is to act, not react in ways that only reinforce the opposition. Anzaldúa develops the idea of the mestiza consciousness, a way of thought that makes the borderlands its home instead of allowing itself to be categorized on one or the other side of the borderline. She distinguishes that her experience of living on the border of nationality, gender, and sexuality, give her a unique perspective about the way that dualities created by these concepts can be overcome:

As a mestiza I have no country, my homeland cast me out; yet all countries are mine because I am every woman's sister or potential lover. (As a lesbian I have no race, my own people disclaim me; but I am all races because there is the queer of me in all races). I am cultureless because, as a feminist, I challenge the collective cultural/religious male-derived beliefs of Indo-Hispanics and Anglos; yet I am cultured because I am participating in the creation of yet another culture, a new story to explain the world and our participation in it, a new value system with images and symbols that connect us to each other and to the planet. Soy un amasamiento, I am an act of kneading, of uniting and joining that not only has produced both a creature of darkness and a creature of light, but also a creature that questions the definitions of light and dark and gives them new meanings." (102-3)

This position sheds new light on the way I think about people and texts because in class we've talked about ethnicity, economic status, gender, and religion, all in their own respective categories. But Anzaldúa combines all the various aspects of her identity in order to show that the interplay between the differences provide a person's identity and the hope for "kneading" and uniting.

A unique aspect of the book is that Anzaldúa's writing style echoes her ideas about inhabiting the borderlands. The language switches back and forth between Spanish and English, enabling her to use the words from both languages to more fully express herself. Her writing also transfers between poetry and prose, which prevents her text from fitting neatly within one genre. Also, she weaves her personal history together with the history of her people to demonstrate restrictive mentalities and offer hope for change. Her writing style and her lifestyle seem to exemplify the new mestiza consciousness that she describes.

Because I, a mestiza,
continually walk out of one culture
and into another,
because I am in all cultures at the same time,
alma entre dos mundos, tres, cuatro,
me zumba la cabeza con lo contradictorio.
Estoy norteada por todas las voces que me hablan
simultaneamente.