Gloria Anzaldua grew up in the borderlands, a region that seems to her to be often dismissed region, though powerful in its dualities and unhindered mixings of language, culture and people, resulting in the potential for people to create a new way of being.
Borderlands/La Frontera is a sort of auto-history, a text that allows Anzaldua to locate herself and Chicanos within Mexican-U.S. history by rewriting the history of the region. She begins by telling of the mythical Aztec homeland, Aztlan, that existed somewhere in the American Southwest. Aznaldua gives Chicanos an ancient homeland and an ancient claim to the U.S.: Chicanos were here long before the waves of immigration and the founding of the New World.
Anzaldua does the same with history, locating Chicanos within Mexican and U.S. history, retelling it in a manner that rings true, as she aligns Chicano history alongside the gaping holes in mainstream U.S. history. She weaves in the iconography of the Aztecs, and traces the loss of the feminine back to the Aztec departure from the American Southwest. In remembering the once all powerful goddess of creation and destruction, who embodied the life/death dualities, Anzaldua reinstates the feminine power and issues a call to Chicanas to create a new culture.
Among all of this, Anzaldua weaves in poetry, quotes, familial and personal anecdotes, and writes in Spanish, English and Nahautl, the Aztec language. She is unapologetic in her use of languages and genres, throwing the reader into the cultural mix of what it means to be of the border.
Borderlands/La Frontera ends high on hope for the future, for the potential of a positive fusion of cultures.
Borderlands/La Frontera is a sort of auto-history, a text that allows Anzaldua to locate herself and Chicanos within Mexican-U.S. history by rewriting the history of the region. She begins by telling of the mythical Aztec homeland, Aztlan, that existed somewhere in the American Southwest. Aznaldua gives Chicanos an ancient homeland and an ancient claim to the U.S.: Chicanos were here long before the waves of immigration and the founding of the New World.
Anzaldua does the same with history, locating Chicanos within Mexican and U.S. history, retelling it in a manner that rings true, as she aligns Chicano history alongside the gaping holes in mainstream U.S. history. She weaves in the iconography of the Aztecs, and traces the loss of the feminine back to the Aztec departure from the American Southwest. In remembering the once all powerful goddess of creation and destruction, who embodied the life/death dualities, Anzaldua reinstates the feminine power and issues a call to Chicanas to create a new culture.
Among all of this, Anzaldua weaves in poetry, quotes, familial and personal anecdotes, and writes in Spanish, English and Nahautl, the Aztec language. She is unapologetic in her use of languages and genres, throwing the reader into the cultural mix of what it means to be of the border.
Borderlands/La Frontera ends high on hope for the future, for the potential of a positive fusion of cultures.
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