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jesshooves's review
“Living in a state of psychic unrest, in a Borderland, is what makes poets write and artists create. It is like a cactus needle embedded in the flesh...When I write it feels like I’m carving bone. It feels like I’m creating my own face, my own heart—a Nahuatl concept. My soul makes itself through the creative act. It is constantly remaking and giving birth to itself through my body. It is this learning to live with la Coatlicue that transforms living in the Borderlands from nightmare into numinous experience.”
“La gente Chicana tiene tres madres. All three are mediators: Guadalupe, the virgin-mother who has not abandoned us, la Chingada, the raped mother whom we have abandoned, and la Llorona, the mother who seeks her lost children and is a combination of the other two.”
“But they will never take that pride / of being mexicana-Chicana-tejana / nor our Indian woman’s spirit. / And when the Gringos are gone— / see how they kill one another— / here we’ll still be like the horned toad and the lizard / relics of an earlier age / survivors of the First Fire Age—el Quinto Sol.”
“La gente Chicana tiene tres madres. All three are mediators: Guadalupe, the virgin-mother who has not abandoned us, la Chingada, the raped mother whom we have abandoned, and la Llorona, the mother who seeks her lost children and is a combination of the other two.”
“But they will never take that pride / of being mexicana-Chicana-tejana / nor our Indian woman’s spirit. / And when the Gringos are gone— / see how they kill one another— / here we’ll still be like the horned toad and the lizard / relics of an earlier age / survivors of the First Fire Age—el Quinto Sol.”
em_harring's review against another edition
5.0
This book is amazing; it has such complex layers that I've only barely scratched the surface of with one reading. It demands to be felt. It demands to be heard. It demands to be read over, and over, and over again.
a_novel_femme's review
5.0
i have read, am reading, and will continue to read this text as part of preparing for my masters exam in literature. specifically, i am looking at the borderland that anzaldua speaks of as a place of passing (racial, sexual, class) for individuals, and what it means to constantly exist in that space, without a homeland to move toward or away from.
anzalduas prose and poetry are both symbolic and dense; parts of the book are written in spanish, and my understanding of the language is embarrassingly bad. her analysis of mestiza consciousness coupled with the invocation to feminism are rich, as is her attempt to explain the frustrations of speaking a language that also exists in the borderland, a mixture of spanish and english and other languages, and the ensuing condescension from others who speak so-called "pure" languages.
i highly suggest reading her in conjunction with frantz fanon and trinh t. min-ha; it seems a random mix of theorists, but there is much they have to say about the power of language and the formation of cultural identities.
anzalduas prose and poetry are both symbolic and dense; parts of the book are written in spanish, and my understanding of the language is embarrassingly bad. her analysis of mestiza consciousness coupled with the invocation to feminism are rich, as is her attempt to explain the frustrations of speaking a language that also exists in the borderland, a mixture of spanish and english and other languages, and the ensuing condescension from others who speak so-called "pure" languages.
i highly suggest reading her in conjunction with frantz fanon and trinh t. min-ha; it seems a random mix of theorists, but there is much they have to say about the power of language and the formation of cultural identities.
noturstroganoff's review
4.0
Can’t stop thinking about mother creator and serpentine spirals and also, the race science is wild. I would describe this as the pinnacle of subaltern studies, dangerous in many ways. The trance-state ritual writing has left a deep impression and I will be integrating elements of that into my practice. Still trying to understand my own hang-ups about digging into the Self, like What is the Point, and honoring G.A.’s generosity of intimacy. Restraint, confession, truth, willfullness, drive, polished metal walls of language. Muddled fingers in reflection, the shine of ritual scratch. The cat in the yard stands beside a mound of clay the size of her body. It need not be hewn to mirror her spirit.
nartee_ash's review
challenging
dark
emotional
hopeful
inspiring
reflective
sad
tense
medium-paced
4.75
isagarcia034's review
This book is so annotation heavy for me that I ended up putting it down to take a break in between essays (annotating on the bus was not the vibe) and I forgot to pick it back up (I bought too many books)
nrossi23's review
3.0
astoundingly confusing! but i can appreciate and understand some of the messages within. anzaldúa really did have a talent for mixing the personal and historical into one. but the inability to understand some of the text, while intentional, still leads to a slight disconnect between reader and anzaldúa.