Borderlands/
La Frontera:
The New Mestiza

Her first chapter moves from poem to an alternative narrative of U.S. southwest history (Aztlán) that traces the land’s people from the first inhabitants who crossed the Bering Straights in 35000 BC, to the Cochise and Aztec cultures, to 16th century Spanish conquerors, to 19th century U.S. invasion of the land.  Her second chapter is an exploration of gender and sexuality within Mexican culture.  She lives at the borders of all these cultures, feeling an outsider, until she begins to identify with the Mexican mother goddess Coatlicue, who provides her with the power and imagery of self-creation through an exploration of the Shadow-Beast, whom Coatlicue represents.  Feathers, serpents, blood all become symbols for Anzaldúa’s connection to the earth, to her people, and to herself. The final chapters set out Anzaldúa’s text set out her mestiza consciousness, a consciousness that perceives from all the different identities that exist inside Anzaldúa.  This is a shifting consciousness that moves swiftly across borders and that denies none of her many perspectives. In Anzaldúa’s description, “She puts history through a sieve, winnows out the lies, looks at the forces that we as a race, as women, have been part of” (104). After confrontation with the cultures she in which she is enmeshed, after the “rupture,” she must “reinterpret[] history…use[] new symbols…shape[] new myths…adopt[] new perspectives toward the darkskinned, women and queers. She strengthens her tolerance (and intolerance) for ambiguity. She is willing to share, to make herself vulnerable to foreign ways of seeing and thinking…Deconstruct, construct” (104).