Review (PDF) Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza
Cultural Writing. Essays. Latino/Latina Studies. Rooted in Gloria Anzaldua's experience as a Chicana, a lesbian, an activist, and a writer, the groundbreaking essays and poems in this volume profoundly challenged how we think about identity. BORDERLANDS/LA FRONTERA remapped our understanding of what a "border" is, seeing it not as a simple divide between here and there, us and them, but as a psychic, social, and cultural terrain that we inhabit, and that inhabits all of us. This twentieth-anniversary edition features new commentaries from prominent activists, artists, and teachers on the legacy of Gloria Anzaldua's visionary work.
Paperback: 258 pages
Publisher: Aunt Lute Books; 3rd edition (June 2007)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1879960745
ISBN-13: 978-1879960749
Product Dimensions: 5.5 x 0.8 x 8.5 inches
Shipping Weight: 11.2 ounces
Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars See all reviews (20 customer reviews)
Best Sellers Rank: #217,826 in Books (See Top 100 in Books) #12 in Books > Literature & Fiction > Poetry > Regional & Cultural > United States > Hispanic American #37 in Books > Literature & Fiction > Poetry > Regional & Cultural > European > Spanish #121 in Books > Textbooks > Humanities > History > Latin America
Gloria Anzaldua's 1987 book Borderlands La Frontera: The New Mestiza is a place of conflicting voices that all belong to one person. She plays with language, identity, and genre by using Spanish, Nahuatl, and English to consider her background as "a border woman" between two cultures "Mexican (with a heavy Indian influence) and the Anglo (as a member of a colonized people in our own territory) (Anzaldua, preface). The book is both autobiographical and theoretical. She employs both prose and poetry to consider what it is to live between borders. The borders to which Anzaldua refer are between nations, identities, and languages. It is a liminal space that she explores, which means that it has elements of conflict and complexity. In this book Anzaldua is first a theorist and then a poet. Anzaldua offers a place where stories meet and recombine to help readers consider alternative realities that might have been foreign to them. She disrupts and addresses autocolonization of hegemonic discursive practices and actions against and within herself and beyond.Although it is one text, the book contains two separate works that work in systemic harmony, not in binary opposition. The first half is entitled Atravesando Fronteras / Crossing Borders and consists of seven chapters and endnotes. This portion of the text is based on the author's experiences in synthesis with historic events and Nahuatl guidance that is at once spiritual and practical. Anzaldua leads the reader through a fragmented landscape, explains the way she views the world from her multiple perspectives, and offers this as a source of strength and resistance to colonizing rhetoric that silences voices of difference (Anzaldua, 54-56). The second half of the text is entitled Un Agitado Viento / Ehecatl, The Wind.
Gloria Anzaldúa (1942-2004) also wrote/edited This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color, This Bridge We Call Home: Radical Visions for Transformation, Interviews/Entrevistas, Making Face, Making Soul/Haciendo Caras: Creative and Critical Perspectives by Feminists of Color, The Reader, etc.She wrote in the Preface to this 1987 book, “The psychological borderlands, the sexual borderlands and the spiritual borderlands are not particular to the Southwest. In fact, the borderlands are physically present wherever two or more cultures edge each other, where people of different races occupy the same territory, where under, lower, middle and upper classes touch, where the space between two individuals shrinks with intimacy. I am a border woman. I grew up between two cultures, the Mexican (with a heavy Indian influence) and the Anglo (as a member of a colonized people in our own territory). I have been straddling that… border, and others, all my life.
Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza, Fourth Edition Metis and the Medicine Line: Creating a Border and Dividing a People (The David J. Weber Series in the New Borderlands History) La frontera misional dominica en Baja California (Coleccion Baja California, nuestra historia) (Spanish Edition) La Frontera: Forests and Ecological Conflict in Chile’s Frontier Territory (Radical Perspectives) Por amor a la física: Del final del arco iris a la frontera del tiempo. Un viaje por las maravillas de la física (Spanish Edition) Los Lobos de la Frontera (Plataforma histórica) (Spanish Edition) Las Hijas de Juarez (Daughters of Juarez): Un auténtico relato de asesinatos en serie al sur de la frontera (Spanish Edition) Las Hijas de Juarez (Daughters of Juarez): Un auténtico relato de asesinatos en serie al sur de la frontera (Atria Espanol) (Spanish Edition) La guerra de los zetas: Viaje por la frontera de la necropolítica (Spanish Edition) Nadie es ilegal: Combatiendo el Racismo y la Violencia de Estado en la Frontera (Spanish Edition) Experiencias en la frontera (Spanish Edition) New Mind New Body: The Inner Makeover for a New You The New York Times Monday Through Friday Easy to Tough Crossword Puzzles: 50 Puzzles from the Pages of The New York Times (New York Times Crossword Puzzles) The New York Times Acrostic Puzzles Volume 9: 50 Challenging Acrostics from the Pages of The New York Times (New York Times Acrostic Crosswords) From Nursing Assistant to Patient Care Technician: New Roles, New Knowledge, New Skills, 1e NEW ZEALAND: The Ultimate Travel Guide With Essential Tips About What To See, Where To Go, Eat And Sleep (New Zealand Travel Guide, New Zealand Travel) NEW ZEALAND: The Ultimate Travel Guide and 125 Travel Tips You Must Know Box Set (New Zealand Travel Guide, New Zealand Travel) New Perspectives on Microsoft Access 2010, Comprehensive (New Perspectives Series: Individual Office Applications) DB2/400: The New AS/400 Database: The Unabridged Guide to the New IBM Database Management System
