Something that struck me about our discussion the past week was when someone connected part of our dialogue following Borderlands to the concept of redlining. This was especially poignant to me, since I had done much research surrounding the topic for my own community over the summer. The fact that it could be connected back to the conversations, as well as how many other people could connect with their own perspectives of how these invisible borders have manifested within their own cities, brought another layer of clarity to the topic. It reminded me how borders and boundaries are not restricted to just the context of Anzaldua’s experience, but within everyone’s life as well.
Sorry, I just realized the reply I posted never went through correctly. I’m still learning this website system, I’m not good at tech.
I really liked this first week, I felt really connected to Anzaldúa and her writing style. I appreciate when it feels like an author directly speaks to the experiences I have that I cannot articulate. She communicates those deeply complicated experiences of self so amazingly that I want to keep the quotes just to point at when someone can’t understand what I’m trying to say.
It was also strange being from Texas while listening to people discuss Texas and its issues. I have a very complex relationship with my home, as do most people who have been expelled from Texas in the way that I was. A northern perspective on the south is a very odd thing.
Anzaldua depicted la llorona as “crying for her lost children, los chicanos/Mexicanos.” She describes the entire generation of chicanos as stuck between borders and fighting to find an identity that resonates with them. Chicanos by birth are destined to be lost inside the struggles of a borderland. In Anzaldua’s quote it seemed like she was mourning the lives of Chicanos who figuratively die by shying away from their identities, or who literally die from gang fights, racism, and intolerance. We are neither Mexican nor American and Anzaldua voices a sentiment that many chicanos like myself struggle to accept. Being born in a borderland means fighting for our very existence and self acceptance. Yet Anzaldua’s fights are beautiful and heartbreaking and she selflessly depicts parts of herself that many would shame her for. She is reassuring fellow Chicanas, even to this day, that are not alone in their struggle.
Although we did not spend much time on it, one aspect of Borderlands that I found fascinating throughout the text was Anzaldúa’s relationship to religion. Her indigenous myths and aspects of Catholicism (or Christianity) seemed to overlap each other in interesting ways, e.g. the different versions of la Virgen Guadalupe and how she is represented within her culture.
One quote from Anzaldua that I found inspiring was “I am a turtle, wherever I go, I carry “home” on my back (43). I enjoyed hearing everyone’s thoughts about this certain quote and how everyone had different interpretations. That is what’s so beautiful and fufilling about discussion. I can start to understand different perspectives on the same topic. Anzaldua’s writing style is both stunning and inspiring. Her work is as timeless as it gets. I am grateful to have had the chance to dive into her work and pick it apart and disect it.
“The struggle is inner: Chicano, indo, American Indian, mojado, mexicano, immigrant Latino, Anglo in power, working class Anglo, Black, Asian – our psyches resemble the border-towns and are populated by the same people. The struggle has always been inner, and is played out in the outer terrains. Awareness of our situation must come before inner changes, which in turn must come before changes in society. Nothing happens in the “real” world unless it first happens in the images in our heads.” I found this line to be particularly moving, especially in the context of the entire book. It connects Anzaldúa’s use of mythology and retelling of stories to the struggles of the ‘mestiza,’ as in order to make societal changes, we must first address the structures of oppression within our understanding of ourselves – often developed in our mythologies. It has led me to consider the belief systems I’m holding on to that propagate the very ideas that have led to the disempowerment of the Chicana over the last few centuries. Overall, Anzaldúa’s work caused me to question a lot of my identity and what being a biracial Chicana means to me. I have struggled with the duality of my patchwork identity for years, and now I’m starting to open my eyes to the systems within my own head that stop me from embracing myself as an amalgamation.
Anzaldua’s experience as a Chicana, lesbian woman in the 70s and 80s is still applicable to many different cultures and identities today. The way she reinforces the concept of legitimizing oneself and prioritizing your own peace is admirable. She writes, “I will no longer be made to feel ashamed of existing. I will have my voice: Indian, Spanish, white. I will have my serpent’s tongue- my woman’s voice, my sexual voice, my poets voice. I will overcome the tradition of silence” (59). Despite her ideas of focusing on oneself and being okay with leaving home, she still focuses on reforming the community she grew up in. Anzaldua does not blame her people for their circumstances or for the bigotry that was imposed onto their culture. For example, she acknowledges how white supremacy has played a large part in creating the hierarchies that subject women and queer people to oppression. Despite this, she still chastises the people in her culture for their lack of self-determination in repairing the issues present in the community. The betrayal she feels from her ethnic community because of the other identities resonated with me so much, and overall made Borderlands a pleasurable and sentimental read.
First of all, I just wanted to express gratitude towards my classmates for the enriching discussions we had this week. I feel like I came out of class with both a broader and deeper understanding of the text. The explorations we had of Anzaldua’s syntactical choices stuck with me the most. I hadn’t thought much about the opening of the first chapter being a poem as opposed to prose, but I love the immediate introduction of the motif of blurring borders through fluid poetry. The prose sections are physically bordered with margins, and are all in all, more rigid in tone and content. She creates and shatters borders through her words, just like her identity does. I remain curious about the mythology and folk Catholicism throughout BORDERLANDS. I found figures like La Virgen de Guadalupe and Coatlicue fascinating, but I don’t think I fully internalized their significance. I wonder: how does the syncretic nature of the religion put up internal spiritual borders for people within the practice? What about external borders from the Church?
One of the quotes in the text that resonated with me was the two lines of verse at the end of the second chapter. Anzaldúa writes, “Aquí en la soledad prospera su rebeldía. / En la soledad Ella prospera” (23). Loosely translated into English, these lines are, “Here in solitude their rebellion thrives. / In solitude, She thrives.” This quote stood out to me because it highlights the power of self reflection and solitude. Most of the pressures people of the borderlands face are external (whether from their environment, the expectations inherited from their families, the physical borders that surround them, etc.); the most powerful means to counteract these pressures is to turn inward—to isolate within one’s thoughts and inner self. By capitalizing Ella, she directs these ideas more specifically towards those who are female-identifying or, more broadly, towards any minorities who have faced or currently face discrimination. This idea of taking time for silent, internal reflection in a society that often prioritizes grand actions and loud voices is, to me, one of the greatest acts of rebellion one can take against a discriminatory society. As Anzaldúa explores in other parts of the text, focusing on the Self is something that isn’t promoted enough in society, but is very rewarding; it can make one thrive, as Anzaldúa might say.
Though we touched on this concept in class, the quote “What we are suffering from is an absolute despot duality that says we are able to be only one or the other” (19) will really stick with me. This quote directly conveys one of the larger concepts in BORDERLANDS about one identity being made up of many different, and sometimes contradictory, parts. I particularly enjoyed the parts of our discussion where we pointed out and suggested ways that Azandula both as a person and a writer deals with all these different identities that are begging to become one. I was also consistently fascinated by the new ideas brought up about this specific topic throughout the entire discussion, and this topic acted as a backbone that other concepts in the text could be drawn back to.
One of the things that stuck with me the most from our in-class analysis this week was the somewhat impromptu dialogue we had on redlining and racial borders in our own communities.
In English classes I had in the past, we were very focused on analysis specific to the text, but I’ve enjoyed the experience that’s come with letting the topic of discussion wander, as the topic of borders is something everyone has a differing (but at the same time very similar) experience with, and exploring what borders mean to us at the same time as analyzing what they mean to the authors we read helps expand our capacity for knowledge about them.
A key theme in Borderlands that I wish we were able to touch on more was that of erasure. I know we talked about it several times, especially in relation to the clash of identities. However, there were 2 quotes that stuck out to me in regard to Anzaldúa feeling erased, first in terms of her gender and second in terms of her culture.
“The first time I heard two women, a Puerto Rican and a Cuban, say the word “nosotras, I was shocked. I had not known the word existed. Chicanas use nosotros whether we’re male or female. We are robbed of our female being by the masculine primal. Language is a male discourse.”
I was shocked to hear that Anzaldúa had never heard the term nosotras. Learning Spanish, I was always taught to use nosotras when referring to a group of women and nosotros when referring to a group of men or both genders. I always thought it a little strange that there was no neutral term combining the two and that women were absorbed into the male language, but not having any term for a group of all women is a major loss. It seems targeted, like a way to rob women of organizing together and gaining power, as they are always dependent on male verbiage.
“They like to think I have melted in the pot. But I haven’t. We haven’t.”
This contradiction to the common metaphor of the United States as a melting pot was incredibly refreshing and powerful. I love how Anzaldúa fights against the common idea that colorblindness can solve racism. She doesn’t want to her Chicana identity erased in order to be treated fairly. She just wants to be treated fairly, regardless. Anzaldúa’s culture is integral to her personhood, and in this quote she refuses to let it be spun into an American political agenda, no matter how seemingly progressive it may be.
The concept of knowledge being a border particularly resonates with me. Anzaldúa writes, “Every increment of consciousness, every step forward is a. . . crossing. I am again an alien in new territory. . . ‘Knowing’ is painful because after ‘it’ happens I can’t stay in the same place and be comfortable. I am no longer the same person I was before” (48). Especially given the academic setting that we discussed BORDERLANDS in, this quote really made me think about the way that both ignorance and awareness can affect an individual’s perceptions of themselves.
I found through Anzaldúa’s writing that so many quotes proved relevant to multiple facets of life and living on a border. Of course, the book is about borders, but the way that one border is described could also be seen as a border in a different part of life. There are a couple of quotes that really stick with me, but one specifically is from the beginning of the book, it reads,
“A Borderland is a vague and undetermined place created by the emotional residue of an unnatural boundary,”.
This residue could be emotional, however, there is also physical “residue”, as we discussed (the way towns, cities, schools, etc. are organized). So while this “residue” is emotionally tolling, it’s interesting how the border can be the physical remnants of past prejudices.
I’m stuck on how Anzaldua uses very physical, experiential language to describe the spiritual and creative aspects of her life, especially in Chapter 6. “I can’t stomach it, become nauseous, or burn with fever, worsen.” (page 70). The way that she talks about her need to write blurs the line between the spiritual side of her need to write and the direct reality she talks about at the beginning of the book. She uses this kind of language for the entire chapter, and it’s visceral enough to have stuck in my head. I don’t have that kind of relationship with the work I do: not because I don’t love art, or because I don’t need to do it, but because the consequences of neglecting that part of myself take work to notice. They’re always exclusively emotional, not all-consuming like Anzaldua describes.
She ends the chapter with a description of her current philosophy on her writing, saying “for only through the body, through the pulling of flesh, can the human soul be transformed” (page 75). Does her need make her a better, more committed writer? Or does she need to write only because she is already committed to the things she is writing about?
A couple of quotes that’s stuck with me from Borderlands, but we didn’t have a chance to talk about:
1. “”we only know that we are hurting, we suspect that there is something ‘wrong’ with us, something fundamentally ‘wrong”‘ (67)
This quote is when Anzaldúa is talking about shame, and how we usually will end up feeling like something is wrong with us when we don’t perfectly fit into one category. This really resinated on the whole theme of being on the boarder line. It’s intriguing how she shaped this idea, because she put it so perfectly and understandable. I think most of the time we do end up putting all of the things wrong with society on us, making us feel “wrong” for being ourselves.
(sorry this quote is kind of long)
2. “An addiction (a repetitious act) is a ritual to help one through a trying time; its repetition safeguards the passage, it becomes one’s talisman, one’s touchstone. If it sticks around after having outlived its usefulness, we become “stuck” in it and it takes possession of us. But we need to be arrested. Some past experience or condition has created this need. This stopping is a survival mechanism, but one which must vanish when it’s no longer needed if growth is to occur.”
I think this was my favorite part of the chapters we read. It was put so purely, and it felt like she almost sculpted the words into a beautiful piece of art. From someone who has been on the boarder line of OCD for over a decade, this really spoke to me. Because she is talking about the what we do to feel comfort, safety on that boarder line. However, she also weaves in how we have to let that comfort go to get to the other side of that boarder. This went on a bit of a tangent, but was one of the best excerpts I’ve read in a while.
A quote from Anzaldúa that I found poignant was “The new mestiza copes by developing a tolerance for contradictions, a tolerance for ambiguity,” which reflects how a Borderlands experience exists torn between whatever two or more sides create that border and at times forced to accept descriptions and definition by those external sides whether or not they genuinely represent the individual’s, or the culture’s, identity.
Something that struck me about our discussion the past week was when someone connected part of our dialogue following Borderlands to the concept of redlining. This was especially poignant to me, since I had done much research surrounding the topic for my own community over the summer. The fact that it could be connected back to the conversations, as well as how many other people could connect with their own perspectives of how these invisible borders have manifested within their own cities, brought another layer of clarity to the topic. It reminded me how borders and boundaries are not restricted to just the context of Anzaldua’s experience, but within everyone’s life as well.
Sorry, I just realized the reply I posted never went through correctly. I’m still learning this website system, I’m not good at tech.
I really liked this first week, I felt really connected to Anzaldúa and her writing style. I appreciate when it feels like an author directly speaks to the experiences I have that I cannot articulate. She communicates those deeply complicated experiences of self so amazingly that I want to keep the quotes just to point at when someone can’t understand what I’m trying to say.
It was also strange being from Texas while listening to people discuss Texas and its issues. I have a very complex relationship with my home, as do most people who have been expelled from Texas in the way that I was. A northern perspective on the south is a very odd thing.
Anzaldua depicted la llorona as “crying for her lost children, los chicanos/Mexicanos.” She describes the entire generation of chicanos as stuck between borders and fighting to find an identity that resonates with them. Chicanos by birth are destined to be lost inside the struggles of a borderland. In Anzaldua’s quote it seemed like she was mourning the lives of Chicanos who figuratively die by shying away from their identities, or who literally die from gang fights, racism, and intolerance. We are neither Mexican nor American and Anzaldua voices a sentiment that many chicanos like myself struggle to accept. Being born in a borderland means fighting for our very existence and self acceptance. Yet Anzaldua’s fights are beautiful and heartbreaking and she selflessly depicts parts of herself that many would shame her for. She is reassuring fellow Chicanas, even to this day, that are not alone in their struggle.
Although we did not spend much time on it, one aspect of Borderlands that I found fascinating throughout the text was Anzaldúa’s relationship to religion. Her indigenous myths and aspects of Catholicism (or Christianity) seemed to overlap each other in interesting ways, e.g. the different versions of la Virgen Guadalupe and how she is represented within her culture.
One quote from Anzaldua that I found inspiring was “I am a turtle, wherever I go, I carry “home” on my back (43). I enjoyed hearing everyone’s thoughts about this certain quote and how everyone had different interpretations. That is what’s so beautiful and fufilling about discussion. I can start to understand different perspectives on the same topic. Anzaldua’s writing style is both stunning and inspiring. Her work is as timeless as it gets. I am grateful to have had the chance to dive into her work and pick it apart and disect it.
“The struggle is inner: Chicano, indo, American Indian, mojado, mexicano, immigrant Latino, Anglo in power, working class Anglo, Black, Asian – our psyches resemble the border-towns and are populated by the same people. The struggle has always been inner, and is played out in the outer terrains. Awareness of our situation must come before inner changes, which in turn must come before changes in society. Nothing happens in the “real” world unless it first happens in the images in our heads.” I found this line to be particularly moving, especially in the context of the entire book. It connects Anzaldúa’s use of mythology and retelling of stories to the struggles of the ‘mestiza,’ as in order to make societal changes, we must first address the structures of oppression within our understanding of ourselves – often developed in our mythologies. It has led me to consider the belief systems I’m holding on to that propagate the very ideas that have led to the disempowerment of the Chicana over the last few centuries. Overall, Anzaldúa’s work caused me to question a lot of my identity and what being a biracial Chicana means to me. I have struggled with the duality of my patchwork identity for years, and now I’m starting to open my eyes to the systems within my own head that stop me from embracing myself as an amalgamation.
Anzaldua’s experience as a Chicana, lesbian woman in the 70s and 80s is still applicable to many different cultures and identities today. The way she reinforces the concept of legitimizing oneself and prioritizing your own peace is admirable. She writes, “I will no longer be made to feel ashamed of existing. I will have my voice: Indian, Spanish, white. I will have my serpent’s tongue- my woman’s voice, my sexual voice, my poets voice. I will overcome the tradition of silence” (59). Despite her ideas of focusing on oneself and being okay with leaving home, she still focuses on reforming the community she grew up in. Anzaldua does not blame her people for their circumstances or for the bigotry that was imposed onto their culture. For example, she acknowledges how white supremacy has played a large part in creating the hierarchies that subject women and queer people to oppression. Despite this, she still chastises the people in her culture for their lack of self-determination in repairing the issues present in the community. The betrayal she feels from her ethnic community because of the other identities resonated with me so much, and overall made Borderlands a pleasurable and sentimental read.
First of all, I just wanted to express gratitude towards my classmates for the enriching discussions we had this week. I feel like I came out of class with both a broader and deeper understanding of the text. The explorations we had of Anzaldua’s syntactical choices stuck with me the most. I hadn’t thought much about the opening of the first chapter being a poem as opposed to prose, but I love the immediate introduction of the motif of blurring borders through fluid poetry. The prose sections are physically bordered with margins, and are all in all, more rigid in tone and content. She creates and shatters borders through her words, just like her identity does. I remain curious about the mythology and folk Catholicism throughout BORDERLANDS. I found figures like La Virgen de Guadalupe and Coatlicue fascinating, but I don’t think I fully internalized their significance. I wonder: how does the syncretic nature of the religion put up internal spiritual borders for people within the practice? What about external borders from the Church?
One of the quotes in the text that resonated with me was the two lines of verse at the end of the second chapter. Anzaldúa writes, “Aquí en la soledad prospera su rebeldía. / En la soledad Ella prospera” (23). Loosely translated into English, these lines are, “Here in solitude their rebellion thrives. / In solitude, She thrives.” This quote stood out to me because it highlights the power of self reflection and solitude. Most of the pressures people of the borderlands face are external (whether from their environment, the expectations inherited from their families, the physical borders that surround them, etc.); the most powerful means to counteract these pressures is to turn inward—to isolate within one’s thoughts and inner self. By capitalizing Ella, she directs these ideas more specifically towards those who are female-identifying or, more broadly, towards any minorities who have faced or currently face discrimination. This idea of taking time for silent, internal reflection in a society that often prioritizes grand actions and loud voices is, to me, one of the greatest acts of rebellion one can take against a discriminatory society. As Anzaldúa explores in other parts of the text, focusing on the Self is something that isn’t promoted enough in society, but is very rewarding; it can make one thrive, as Anzaldúa might say.
Though we touched on this concept in class, the quote “What we are suffering from is an absolute despot duality that says we are able to be only one or the other” (19) will really stick with me. This quote directly conveys one of the larger concepts in BORDERLANDS about one identity being made up of many different, and sometimes contradictory, parts. I particularly enjoyed the parts of our discussion where we pointed out and suggested ways that Azandula both as a person and a writer deals with all these different identities that are begging to become one. I was also consistently fascinated by the new ideas brought up about this specific topic throughout the entire discussion, and this topic acted as a backbone that other concepts in the text could be drawn back to.
One of the things that stuck with me the most from our in-class analysis this week was the somewhat impromptu dialogue we had on redlining and racial borders in our own communities.
In English classes I had in the past, we were very focused on analysis specific to the text, but I’ve enjoyed the experience that’s come with letting the topic of discussion wander, as the topic of borders is something everyone has a differing (but at the same time very similar) experience with, and exploring what borders mean to us at the same time as analyzing what they mean to the authors we read helps expand our capacity for knowledge about them.
A key theme in Borderlands that I wish we were able to touch on more was that of erasure. I know we talked about it several times, especially in relation to the clash of identities. However, there were 2 quotes that stuck out to me in regard to Anzaldúa feeling erased, first in terms of her gender and second in terms of her culture.
“The first time I heard two women, a Puerto Rican and a Cuban, say the word “nosotras, I was shocked. I had not known the word existed. Chicanas use nosotros whether we’re male or female. We are robbed of our female being by the masculine primal. Language is a male discourse.”
I was shocked to hear that Anzaldúa had never heard the term nosotras. Learning Spanish, I was always taught to use nosotras when referring to a group of women and nosotros when referring to a group of men or both genders. I always thought it a little strange that there was no neutral term combining the two and that women were absorbed into the male language, but not having any term for a group of all women is a major loss. It seems targeted, like a way to rob women of organizing together and gaining power, as they are always dependent on male verbiage.
“They like to think I have melted in the pot. But I haven’t. We haven’t.”
This contradiction to the common metaphor of the United States as a melting pot was incredibly refreshing and powerful. I love how Anzaldúa fights against the common idea that colorblindness can solve racism. She doesn’t want to her Chicana identity erased in order to be treated fairly. She just wants to be treated fairly, regardless. Anzaldúa’s culture is integral to her personhood, and in this quote she refuses to let it be spun into an American political agenda, no matter how seemingly progressive it may be.
The concept of knowledge being a border particularly resonates with me. Anzaldúa writes, “Every increment of consciousness, every step forward is a. . . crossing. I am again an alien in new territory. . . ‘Knowing’ is painful because after ‘it’ happens I can’t stay in the same place and be comfortable. I am no longer the same person I was before” (48). Especially given the academic setting that we discussed BORDERLANDS in, this quote really made me think about the way that both ignorance and awareness can affect an individual’s perceptions of themselves.
I found through Anzaldúa’s writing that so many quotes proved relevant to multiple facets of life and living on a border. Of course, the book is about borders, but the way that one border is described could also be seen as a border in a different part of life. There are a couple of quotes that really stick with me, but one specifically is from the beginning of the book, it reads,
“A Borderland is a vague and undetermined place created by the emotional residue of an unnatural boundary,”.
This residue could be emotional, however, there is also physical “residue”, as we discussed (the way towns, cities, schools, etc. are organized). So while this “residue” is emotionally tolling, it’s interesting how the border can be the physical remnants of past prejudices.
I’m stuck on how Anzaldua uses very physical, experiential language to describe the spiritual and creative aspects of her life, especially in Chapter 6. “I can’t stomach it, become nauseous, or burn with fever, worsen.” (page 70). The way that she talks about her need to write blurs the line between the spiritual side of her need to write and the direct reality she talks about at the beginning of the book. She uses this kind of language for the entire chapter, and it’s visceral enough to have stuck in my head. I don’t have that kind of relationship with the work I do: not because I don’t love art, or because I don’t need to do it, but because the consequences of neglecting that part of myself take work to notice. They’re always exclusively emotional, not all-consuming like Anzaldua describes.
She ends the chapter with a description of her current philosophy on her writing, saying “for only through the body, through the pulling of flesh, can the human soul be transformed” (page 75). Does her need make her a better, more committed writer? Or does she need to write only because she is already committed to the things she is writing about?
A couple of quotes that’s stuck with me from Borderlands, but we didn’t have a chance to talk about:
1. “”we only know that we are hurting, we suspect that there is something ‘wrong’ with us, something fundamentally ‘wrong”‘ (67)
This quote is when Anzaldúa is talking about shame, and how we usually will end up feeling like something is wrong with us when we don’t perfectly fit into one category. This really resinated on the whole theme of being on the boarder line. It’s intriguing how she shaped this idea, because she put it so perfectly and understandable. I think most of the time we do end up putting all of the things wrong with society on us, making us feel “wrong” for being ourselves.
(sorry this quote is kind of long)
2. “An addiction (a repetitious act) is a ritual to help one through a trying time; its repetition safeguards the passage, it becomes one’s talisman, one’s touchstone. If it sticks around after having outlived its usefulness, we become “stuck” in it and it takes possession of us. But we need to be arrested. Some past experience or condition has created this need. This stopping is a survival mechanism, but one which must vanish when it’s no longer needed if growth is to occur.”
I think this was my favorite part of the chapters we read. It was put so purely, and it felt like she almost sculpted the words into a beautiful piece of art. From someone who has been on the boarder line of OCD for over a decade, this really spoke to me. Because she is talking about the what we do to feel comfort, safety on that boarder line. However, she also weaves in how we have to let that comfort go to get to the other side of that boarder. This went on a bit of a tangent, but was one of the best excerpts I’ve read in a while.
A quote from Anzaldúa that I found poignant was “The new mestiza copes by developing a tolerance for contradictions, a tolerance for ambiguity,” which reflects how a Borderlands experience exists torn between whatever two or more sides create that border and at times forced to accept descriptions and definition by those external sides whether or not they genuinely represent the individual’s, or the culture’s, identity.