Forked Identities

Borderlands/La Frontera by Gloria E. Anzaldúa, paints a very vivid image of life at the border between the United States and Mexico. It enables the reader to appreciate the strict imposition of a border crossing between the two countries, one that has been marked by conflict and violence, which almost serves as a reminder of the differences between the two states and peoples, as a “place of contradictions”. However, she masterfully reconciles these differences and explains how they form a new identity, or perhaps new identities, how even in this borderland, there is are possibilities for one to express themselves.

What is perhaps more striking about this text is the its unique structure, which can be said to be an accurate reflection of Anzaldúa’s thoughts – unorganized, scattered, and constantly switching between different identities. This can be characterized by her repeatedly switching the language of the book between English and Spanish, which makes the reader (even if they possess command over both languages) uncomfortable. But that is exactly how one feels in the borderland – uncomfortable and uneasy. The constant shifting between these two languages in people’s everyday lives leads to an identity crisis. In this way, the book replicates the discomfort experienced in La Frontera. Instead of treating this discomfort as something negative, the residents of the borderland decided to embrace it. Because they did not identify with the language spoken by the people on either side of the border, Anzaldúa and other border people decided to combine them to form their own “forked tongue, a variation of two languages”. She writes: “…for a people who cannot entirely identify with either standard  Spanish nor standard English, what recourse is left to them but to create their own language?”

This “place of contradictions” also manifests itself at a personal level with Anzaldúa recognizing the importance of restoring harmony between conflicting identities. She writes:

The new mestiza copes by developing a tolerance for contradictions, a tolerance for ambiguity. She learns to be an Indian in Mexican culture, to be Mexican from an Anglo point of view. She learns to juggle cultures .. She has a plural personality, she operates in a pluralistic mode – nothing is thrust out, the good the bad and the ugly, nothing rejected, nothing abandoned. Not only does she sustain contradictions, she turns the ambivalence into something else.