A book a day: Gloria Anzaldúa: Borderlands / La Frontera: The New Mestiza

Títulu Original: Borderlands / La Frontera: The New Mestiza
Translation: Carmen Valle
Year of publication: 1987
Valoración: Quite recommended

Founding text of Chicano feminism, linguistic and stylistic hybrid, collage with a central nucleus … several are the possible definitions of a text that transcends the “formal” borders (geographical, linguistic, gender (literary and non -literary), etc.) to place themselves on the border, understood as a constant state of transition.

Formal borders, I insist, that jump through the linguistic airs, since “borderlands” is a faithful reflection of a topography in which they combine without English, Spanish, Nahuatl, Pachuco …, and in the generic, since being partly rehearsal, anthropological text, poems, autobiography, it is nothing of that and it is all at the same time. Despite this hodgepodge, we can divide the text into two distinct parts.

In the first one, “crossing borders / crossing borders,” the essay and anthropological aspect prevails, although always with a strong autobiographical load. Thus, a historical tour of the territories begins in which the childhood and adolescence of Anzaldúa (the southern part of the state of Texas) passed, in which the author accounts for the successive conquests and political, economic and cultural usurpations that, over time, led to the formation of a Chicanian culture. Subsequently, Anzaldúa analyzes the different forms of discrimination that Chicanian culture and, especially, “different” women and people have suffered / suffers, either by reason of race, class, gender or sexual orientation. Eye that we are not facing an exclusive critique of “white” domination, but rather it is an adjustment of accounts against cultural tyranny, wherever it comes from. Finally, the process of formation of the mestizo and feminist consciousness of the author itself is narrated from the tearing between two options (Anglo and the Azteco-Mexican) and the exercise of it as “acting” rather than “reaction” from writing and art.

The second part, “an agitated wind / ehecatl, the wind”, is a set of poems / micro -stories (how diffuse I find that border!) That would become examples (auto) fictionalized of what is expressed in the first part of the book. Autobiographical texts set in the childhood and youth of the author in which the role of Chicana women in the family, in the community or in the work world, diverse stories of violence, discrimination and exploitation, the self -conscientious and sexual emancipation, love, death … hard and accessible texts, although perhaps somewhat irregular as a whole.

Accompany this edition of “Borderlands” one more than revealing interview with Anzaldúa in which some of the keys to an essential text to approach the reality of the “majority minority” of the United States of America and other “minorities” (or perhaps not so much) within that “majority minority”. All this, in addition, in a groundbreaking and original way, but perfectly understandable for a reader with a minimum of interest in the subject.