Borderlands

      In Borderlands-La Frontera, Gloria Anzaldúa describes the trials and tribulations that plague her life as she investigates her self, her land, and her language.  From the onset I was very intrigued by what I thought would be the natural plot flow of this text where Anzaldúa would describe her personal struggles as well as those of her people in attempting to come to a new land of opportunity, albeit one that did not openly accept them.  As a mestiza, or woman of mixed parentage, as well as a lesbian, her path to acceptance came at a much more burdensome price of conflict and denial.  For some, the use of the Spanish language to complement the major ideas of the text may have come as a burden, but even though I only know the basic elements of the language I could tell even before consulting a dictionary the emotion and power that accompanied the various language forms of the mestizo that Anzaldúa describes.  It was hard for me to understand at first why the entirety of the text was not translated to modern English, but I soon came to appreciate the beauty of the Spanish language more than I ever have previously in my studies of it.  Modern English does not translate in the same fashion as Spanish so hence by translating it the reader would be losing the true point that the author is trying to convey about her emotions and actions in these pivotal times of cultural conflict.  My necessity for the Spanish to English dictionary, therefore, became far less bothersome as I became to understand Anzaldús’s point, along with Temple University’s point, in making us read this text.  I really think that by detailing life from the border she is presenting to the reader an entirely different and new culture in and of itself.  While much attention is paid to the conflict that exists between the United States and Mexico, the author is showing us the world of the oppressed mestizo in the borderlands through thoughts, words, and values.  It is rare that an account in literature is based entirely upon the voice of the oppressed, and her words have helped me to appreciate that fact that culture can in fact be identified and wrapped up in language.  These individuals on the border seemed to live by creating their own voices amongst themselves that embodied their values of hard work and a desire to understand everything that they encountered in life.  I was also able to appreciate Anzaldúa’s references to art and imagery because these are things that I can personally identify with, and I feel that art of any variety is crucial to building and appreciating the beauties and ultimately the truths that lie within any culture.  Also, I was surprisingly able to draw some parallels between Anzaldúa’s writing and the lectures of Freud.  She frequently discusses the presence of the unconscious imagery that drives what she does in real life and the emotions and thoughts that accompany these actions.  For example, she discusses the serpent in the unconscious of her slumber as the symbol of “the dark sexual drive, the feminine, the serpentine movement of sexual creativity, and the basis of all energy and life.”  These words immediately brought my mind to Freud’s discussions on dreams and helped me to understand the sequence in which we are studying these texts in class.  Anzaldúa’s work examines perspectives on the mestizo in not only a cultural light, but she also acknowledges and details the psychological attributes that contribute to her writing and the identity of her people as a whole.