The most compelling aspect of Borderlands is perhaps how its form reflects Anzaldúa’s identity. While the text is predominantly prose, it also consists of poetry in both Spanish and English. The start of each chapter is an excerpt from a great Hispanic thinker. Gloria Anzaldúa’s magnum opus is fluid, much like her identity. Her ability to create such an unconventional yet striking text is nothing short of remarkable. Anzaldúa narrates her experience as a mestiza living in la frontera—the borderlands. Her style of writing reflects her conscience—it seeks to represent not only those who reside between the U.S. Southwest/Mexican border, but also those who have historically found themselves at a crossroads with regards to their identity. Hence, she states that the borderlands are “physically present wherever two or more cultures edge each other.” Attempting to navigate the multiple identities gives rise to a feeling that is “alien” to her. Borderlands is an attempt to rationalize multiple identities at the same time instead of having to conform to one or the other. The form of the text is reflective of the writer’s dilemma that she so eloquently articulates in multiple languages. She argues that a woman of color “does not feel safe within the life of her Self” as she is alienated from her mother culture and the dominant culture. As a result, the petrified individual is caught between los intersticios—the spaces between the different worlds she inhabits.

The chapter titled “Entering Into the Serpent” builds on the aforementioned identity crisis. Her experience incorporates the impasse of her stigmatized culture and her sexuality as a queer woman. Anzaldúa emphasizes on the role of the supernatural in her Chicano/mexicano identity. Furthermore, she reinterprets the mystical elements that seem to be rejected by society. According to Anzaldúa, organized religion encourages “a split between the body and the soul.” However, she argues that the supernatural is integral to understanding the human condition. She believes that in this day and age, la Virgen de Guadalupe is the most potent religious, political, and cultural image of the Chicano/mexicano identity. Guadalupe, a symbol of hope, unites people of different races, religions, and languages. Guadalupe has been used by the Church to perpetuate institutionalized oppression by subverting the true identities of the three mystical madres: “Guadalupe to make us docile and enduring, la Chingada to make us ashamed of our Indian side, and la Llorona to make us long-suffering people.” However, it has not obscured the meaning for all as the mestizo continue to worship the old entities under the guise of Christian saints. Indigenous spirituality has been preserved under the façade of rationality and continues to be socialized within individuals. White rationality denounced mystical elements by classifying the existence of the “other world” as heathen superstition. For Anzaldúa, la Llorona, the mother who seeks her lost children, symbolizes her reflection on not only her lost homeland, but also the imposition of a subverted identity by the colonizers.

The question of identity is further obfuscated due to Anzaldúa being a queer mestiza. Instead of viewing Guadalupe in accordance with the imposed re-imagination, Anzaldúa chooses to see her for what she is: “the symbol of the dark sexual drive, the chthonic (underworld), the feminine, the serpentine movement of sexuality, of creativity, the basis of all energy and life.” She instead connected herself to Coatlalopeuh, the indigenous manifestation of Guadalupe. In doing so, she embraces her femininity as a queer woman whilst foregoing what is now interpreted as tradition in an attempt to reconcile both her culture and sexuality. She does so by using la facultad—the capacity to see the meaning of deeper realities in surface phenomena. By viewing the connection between the ‘disassociated’ body and spirit, la facultad offers the marginalized a possibility of navigating a world that poses many dangers to them. It is a heuristic method for those who “do not feel psychologically or physically safe.” The premise of the process in Anzaldúa’s experience is embracing the body and negating the traditional aspects of an oppressive religion. By using la facultad, Anzaldúa’s re-imagination of Guadalupe lends her strength and hope. Through her writing, she seeks to not only offer a possibility to the queer Chicano women, but to all those who face intersecting oppressions.

As soon as a child is born, the world decided whether the child will be male or female. Andaluza argues that from the very beginning a despot duality is imposed on us which divides us in realms of either/or. This duality is oppressive because it is totalizing and leaves no room for any other conception of the self. Andulaza is Mexican, she is a Chicano; she is black and Indian; she is a woman; she is queer.  She has lived on the borderlands her entire life, juggling all her identities all her life.

 She speaks Tex-Mex; that’s her favorite language of the eight languages she speaks. She can instantly switch from Spanish to English in one sentence, in one word. She loves listening to Mexican music, her music, even if they make her feel ashamed for doing so. She can see the Serpent mother, even when they tell her she doesn’t exist. She is Mexican for being Mexican is a state of soul and she is American too for there’s an Anglo within her too. This plurality is what she has inherited, and she can’t possibly be asked to shred one part of an identity for another for within that plurality is home. Home, the smell of “woodsmoke, perfuming my Grandmother’s clothes, her skin. The stench of cow manure and yellow patches in the ground, the crack of a .22 rifle and the reek of cordite. Homemade cheese sizzling in a pan, melting inside a tortilla.” Home is perpetually tied to all her identities, how can she run from one and turn to another when all are home for her.  

She is a woman, she is queer. She believes in the shadow beast within her, the one that refuses to be quiet, the one that refuses “orders from outside authorities. It is a part of me that hates restraints of any kind, even those self-imposed.” She refuses to accept the heteronormativity and misogyny that her culture imposes on her. She refuses to mold herself by the image the world prescribed for her. She calls them out, the Anglos and the Chicano, all those who injure her. “Not me sold out my people but they me.” The mother culture refuses to accommodate her for her culture too remains strangled by the despotic duality she has been calling out her whole life. Home is no longer home.

The world is not a safe place for a woman; a woman is alien in her mother culture and alien to the dominant white culture; men of all races are free to make her their prey. She is pushed to the spaces between the worlds she inhabits, and such is the fear that she cannot move for that is the price of refusing to settle for less than recognition of herself. The dominant culture keeps telling her to lose the accent or “go back to Mexico”. Her own Mexico doesn’t accept her either so where is she to go.

“I have no country because my homeland cast me out; yet all countries are mine because I am every woman’s sister or potential lover. I am cultureless because as a feminist, I challenge the collective religious/cultural male derived beliefs of Indo-Hispanics and Anglos yet I am cultured because I am participating in the creation of 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.”

Andaluza, much like Fanon and all the other thinkers we have studied in the course, invites all of us to think of new ways of inhabiting the world so that we can think about constructing a new human subject which rejects the despotic dualism the world imposes on each of us. Andaluza, through her writing and conception of borderlands explains fully how despotic this duality, which we almost take to be natural, is and the only way to see its despotism and its unnaturalness is if we view the world from Andaluza’s vantage point, Black, Indian, Mexican, Anglo, Woman, Queer, someone who cannot be contained, who cannot be reduced to this or that, someone who is only at home with her pluralism.

“I want the freedom to carve and chisel my own face.” The freedom that any woman can ask of is this, if she is denied home, let her be free to create her own home.     

            Gloria Anzaldúa’s Borderland/La Frontera: The New Mestiza,by shedding light upon her people living at the US-Mexican border who conform to neither a fully American identity nor an entirely Mexican identity, brings forth the inhabitants of borderlands that have been phased out of history owing to their non conformity and lack of homogeneity when compared to the rest of the populace. These “borders” are not limited to the physical realm of states but rather spread over into other spheres of life. Borders exist everywhere as Ms. Anzaldúa points out. Between people on the basis of race, religion, caste, creed, sexuality etc. There is a leap between one group and the next which leads to a distinction between the two. The author describe her people who cannot distinguish between the US-Mexican border on multiple levels and possess characteristics of both and have formed a ‘hybrid’ identity. For me, the idea of borders being so deeply embedded in us on multiple levels was a revelation and the most striking thing in Borderland.

The author being a both a Chicana and lesbian activist brilliantly employs her book in her quest to call upon the majority of the people on either side to change their attitudes which are nurturing this divide and silencing of the borderlands. Far from being a highly localized work, the idea of borderland dwellers are apparent elsewhere around the world as well. For example, the case of the Federally Administered Tribal Areas in Pakistan and their inhabitants who have not fully conformed to either a Pakistani identity or Afghan identity for centuries. Their resulting silencing has led to much unrest since the time of the British-Afghan Wars and has spilled over into the current status quo as well. By force of habit and owing to the dominant state narrative, many of us assign wholesome identities, to borderland dwellers, of a binary nature refusing to entertain the possibility of a hybridization between cultures on both sides of the border. Ms. Anzaldúa moves away from this manufactured perspective of culture and people in borderlands to provide these people with their own voice. A direly needed different perspective to fully understand how much even libertarian politics can squash the voice of millions by establishing borders among states which dissect cultural identities as well in their quest to serve national objectives.

All in all, Gloria Anzaldúa’s book struck me with the idea of how long the journey remains yet. Despite covering an entire course, I never once thought about the people living in borderlands, dismissing them as either part of one manufactured identity or the other. Until Ms. Anzaldúa’s book that is.

Yes, in a few years or centuries  la raza will rise up,                                                          tongue intact carrying the best of all the cultures.                                                                  That sleeping serpent, rebellion- (r)evolution, will spring up.                                            Like old skin will fall the slave ways of obedience, acceptance, silence.                    Like serpent lightning we’ll move, little woman.                                                                  You’ll see.

Gloria Anzaldua speaks from a site of irresolvable longing. Her project of imagining, or rather, re-imagining the Borderlands poses a question to the impossibility of her condition, that is, of invisibility. What must that be like? A crippling feeling, to wake up knowing you have no place in this world. To be resigned to the recesses; your emotions, thoughts, experiences all become invalid and like the rest of yourself, they die in silence. As if you never existed.

This is her reality, but it is not the only one.

She is a product of the Borderland and in situating herself within it, Anzaldua prescribes it with a new meaning. She transforms it; drawing potential from a site of failure (like the Borderland), she is reckoning with the past, present and future, and through writing, she creates the possibility to begin not from a point of loss, but recovery. Her motive is simple; she demands to be seen, she demands to be heard and therefore, imposes upon the reader a responsibility to bear witness. To what? A new way, a different way, a third way.

In her conception, the Borderland is not limited to a physical space, rather she expands it to an experience. Transcending material reality, the Borderland also exists in our imaginations, our hearts and our memories. It is everywhere and nowhere at once, and malleable to our individual experiences. It is hers, mine and yours and never confined to just one thing. It is a reflection of what is feared- in this case a homosexual Chicano woman-  and a site of confrontation – where all injustices are meted out and grievances are voiced. It is a holy space- the point where the worldly and divine meet- and a dimension where the irrational can prevail. It is a way of living in fear, in a state of constant danger and reaction. A ‘half and half’ life, never whole and always lacking in some way. But above all, the Borderland is a zone of healing, it takes what is confined to the zone of ‘non-being’ and elevates it to a state of recognition. It mends the ‘split’ by merging and celebrating two opposing forces and gives birth to a new consciousness, a mestiza consciousness.

La mestiza has gone from being the sacrificial goat to becoming the officiating priestess at the crossroads.

Anzaldua does not engage in a simple telling of the Borderlands. She is embodying an ethic which renders the Borderland as a location of restoration, not just for herself, but for everyone. By employing elaborate descriptions of the mestiza and Chicano tradition and interchanging between the multiple languages she speaks, Anzaldua is giving the reader a sense of her reality. There is a complexity in her dialogue which, to my reading, has a twofold effect. She gives herself uncluttered space to express herself fully; going back an forth between prose and poetry, mixing languages and conducting monologues in Chicano Spanish. Yet at the same time, while she accommodates herself, her writing has a reflective element as well. In adopting an interchangeability between languages, Anzaldua is embodying for the reader the limitations and obstructions she faces in reality, within her writing. The struggle of getting through half understood sentences and pages of indecipherable words are meant to invoke within them an experience of life in the Borderlands. But there is a purpose in this. By embedding her struggle within her writing, Anzaldua is able to show how the trouble with being our true selves is one we all share. The denial of one of us means the denial of all of us and the violence within this is seen in how people like Anzaldua, despite making themselves visible, remain invisible.

La Frontera is an attempt to preserve and provide evidence of historical invisibility, but with that it also displays an effort to shift our understanding from an economy of loss, to an economy of abundance. Anzaldua calls for an acknowledgement of the struggle. She calls for a uniting of all those who live in the Borderlands, to come together and repeal our lifeworlds. To draw from one another and build a common culture because without that we will have nothing to hold us together.

Norderlands La Frontera argues the need for living in “crossroads” and “confluence” whilst representing this idea in its own form. Anzaldua integrates her language, uses poetry to illustrate this point. Her piece becomes the breaking of the intellectual borderland. In this we can see the structure of the Borderlands La Frontera as a Meta form of resistance, breaking down the conformity and showcasing deviance in writing.

The text vacillates between Spanish and English. This Illustrates her point:

Until I can take pride in my language, I cannot take pride in myself. Until I can accept as legitimate Chicano Texas Spanish, Tex-Mex and all the other languages I speak, I cannot accept the legitimacy of myself. Until I am free to write bilingually and to switch codes without having always to translate, while I still have to speak English or Spanish when I would rather speak Spanglish, and as long as I have to accommodate the English speakers rather than having them accommodate me, my tongue will be illegitimate

Anzaldua demonstrates the oppression that takes place through language. Being caught in her hybrid identity, neither her Spanish nor her English is seen as proper. There is a clear delineation in linguistic borders. Accented English is not real English, nor is “Anglosized” Spanish. From the offset individuals like Anzaldua are caught in the borderland. However her conscious use both languages is rejection of these constructed borders. She does not simply adhere to the English or the Spanish speaker. She allows the “chromosomes [to] cross over”, embracing the ambiguity of her “hybrid identity”. The “tyranny” of language is subverted by her un-translated use of Spanish.  One is not prized over the other, one in fact coexists with the other; becoming borderless.

Her writing becomes an example of deviant literature. It consciously disregards the mainstream ethics of writing. The dichotomy of the “rational and “irrational, magic and reality and real and imaginary” is broken through her use of poetry and fiction. Anzaldua explains this point:

 In perceiving conflicting information and points of view, she is subjected to a swamping of her psychological borders. She has discovered that she can’t hold concepts or ideas in rigid boundaries. The borders and walls that are supposed to keep the undesirable ideas out are entrenched habits and patterns of behavior; these habits and patterns are the enemy within. Rigidity means death. Only by remaining flexible is she able to stretch the psyche horizontally and vertically.

The rational is not the only tool one should use, this represents another constructed border. La facultad -“sensing,” a quick perception arrived at without conscious reasoning- is shown to be vital. The idea of logic as being the only way to know is challenged. Anzalduas use of personal and literary forms break the established structure of argumentative pieces. The magical is intertwined with the “real”.  She provides a piece of writing that is “less literal and more psychic”.  It shows us that one no longer needs to dwell on the imposed cold styles, that disregard the various elements of knowledge.

Her use of free verse poetry with varying structure can also be seen as a comment. Her poems at the end of the book serve as a good example. There is no repetition in the placements of the stanzas, indicating a completely free, borderless form. However the poem right after conforms more to a block structure. The sentence “to live in borderland means” is used at the start of every stanza. The difference in the existing borderland and the borderless land is made explicit just by these two poems. There is constraint in the “To live in the borderland poem”, it is rigid, which to her is “death”. It captures the demarcated spirit of the borderland world, it also lists down what it means to exist in this space. The poem preceding it however escapes all “logical” sequence, dwells in the unknown, rejects confining the stanzas into an ordered structure. It therefore becomes “a walk from one culture to the other”, one language to the other or one way of knowing to the other. It does not attempt to know all, but accepts the ambiguity of the hybrid world, deconstructing the borders that have been artificially built up.

Borderlands La Frontera echoes many ideas of intersectional politics. It however takes it one step forward by providing a means of learning, writing and knowing that is distinct from the rigid, demarcated and strictly regulated world we know.

“Neither eagle nor serpent, but both. And like the ocean, neither animal respects borders”