Reviews

Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza by Gloria E. Anzaldúa

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rocionaval's review

challenging dark emotional hopeful informative inspiring mysterious reflective relaxing sad tense

4.75

Full disclosure: in accordance with my required reading, I only read the prose chapters, not the poems. Can’t afford to read more than I need to with the amount of reading necessary in this master’s program tbh

wquindley's review against another edition

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challenging informative reflective sad medium-paced

4.0

gloria anzaldúa’s writing style is so beautiful, and i thought it was really cool how she interspersed Chicana language throughout.

trisjdavila's review

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challenging emotional informative inspiring reflective slow-paced

3.25

when this book came out originally in 87 (or thereabouts I believe), I’m sure it was revolutionary. reading it now I don’t feel that it changes much of my perspective.

if it were rewritten now, what would have to be changed is the desired audience. Borderlands/La Frontera is a bilingual book that doesn’t seem as though it is for bilingual people. it could be more spanglish. it does itself a disservice to have small bits of spanish (all translated). if you want to write bilingual you have to go all the way, otherwise it makes it feel as though this book is for white people and I don’t think that’s what it was intended to be.

I enjoyed parts of it but overall I wanted more from it and it did not broaden my perspective of being on the border of race/culture/gender/sexuality. I am glad I read it, though.