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PART IV: “Bearing Witness”

In this piece, Anzaldúa writes about the double consciousness of being in two places at once. Whether that be identity or thought process, there is a duality to one’s being that is a place of transformation is what I am perceiving from Anzaldúa’s expressions. I really enjoy how Anzaldúa describes this process as ensueños because it captures the reality of how dreams and the unconscious are a place for processing and creating new realities. Then, she uses this metaphor to describe the process of being an artist and displaying this type of consciousness into the world. The second concept that really stuck with me was Coyolxauhqui process that she decribes as the process of deconstructing oneself and putting yourself back together. The part about this concept that I like the most is how it is seen as a form of decolonizing oneself and how we must completely take our being apart and create our new identity afterwards. This is how deep colonization imbeds itself. I really just enjoyed how Analdúa describes the entire creative, dual consciousness and decolonization process through art and creativity. It was an inspiring piece.

The painting is “Greed 2″ by Liliana Wilson. 

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PART IV: “Transforming American Studies”

This was a piece I felt I had to read and write about because of how important I, and many other people, realize education is. Education feels like transformation. When I take courses focusing on the Americas, I feel like I am just beginning to understand the entirety of all issues in United States and the Americas history. So when Anzaldúa writes that cross border collaboration is necessary in education, I really understood what she meant. Even taking a course in Mexican politics is so important to people in the United States because of our inextricably close relationship politically, socially and economically. Another point she brings up is educating versus competing for status by being inclusive. This is always a battle in the world of activism and there does require more collaboration rather than divisiveness that is created by the pressure that systems put on individuals. This requires learning and teaching the things that are not part of the status quo and take us away from the structures that perpetuate ethnocentric learning. The challenge of changing the system is starting within ourselves and changing ourselves as Anzaldúa expresses. This change requires courage. We must have the courage as educators and citizens to challenge the structure of education that has been imposed on us.

A link to a project that is informative of many ways of knowing: https://www.globalonenessproject.org

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PART IV:”(Un)natural bridges, (Un)safe spaces”

The bridges that Anzaldúa is speaking about are connecting cultures, ideas and ideals. One of the biggest takeaways from this piece is how these bridges must be transformed and maintained. She has realized that even things like her own writing, for example The Bridge Called my Back, has evolved over time and transformed in its impact as society has also transformed. I also think her idea of questioning the labeling of communities is really crucial. There are assumptions made that may not represent the reality of individuals. I do wish she was more explicit about this, but I generally follow the idea. When Anzaldúa begins discussing how we must honor people crossing both sides of the bridge and respecting the differences in people I thought of Paulo Freire’s Pedagogy Of The Oppressed. In this writing, Freire expressed how the future must be void of any type of oppressor or other. It must be a world where everyone is honored and valued. Later in her piece she describes this necessity and it is a really eye opening idea in my opinion. This was something that Freire’s piece exposed me to and has never left my mind and the way I think about the world.

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PART IV: “Forward to Cassell’s Encyclopedia of Queer Myth, Symbol and Spirit”

What I really appreciated about this piece was Anzaldúa’s reflection on her spirituality and its importance in her life. She writes that “[spirituality] also invites encounters with other realities, other worlds” (229). I think for Anzaldúa, she has prioritized and emphasized the role of religion on her life and her ability to process her identities and create a reality where they are all honored and seen the way she feels identities should be seen. What I enjoyed so much about this piece was the discussion of queer spirituality and the process of creating this space on her own along with others in the community who were searching for this space. How does one create spirituality? This made me really reflect on society as a whole and how adamant we are about fitting people into certain boxes and expecting them to stay there and embody them in the ways culture tells us they should. Often times, Anzaldúa is expressing struggling with living in the mestiza society and working through that complex, gray area. What I really found interesting is how uncomfortable it is for anyone who has conflicting or mestiza identities to embrace them both and how this feels contradictory. I really just enjoyed this piece and the idea of creating sacred spaces for queer individuals.

Link to a podcast about queer spirituality: http://queerhealingjourneys.com/podcast/

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Part III: “The Way Station (Changing Identities)”

Based on all of the topics that Anzaldúa speaks to in her writings and artistic creations, the one that is the most interesting to me is the space of nepantla and shifting identities. This illustration speaks to the process of shifting identities and weighing them as we move through life. We acquire new identities throughout and process them at different stages of life. Still, she always says that she is the sum of her identities with none of them overpowering the other in any certain way, but they just expose themselves at different times. The words she includes are confusion, liminal state, coming out as, transition, and death to rebirth. These verbs and descriptions are used to depict the steps within and identity founding or crisis or transformation. The interesting thing about nepantla is that there is no complete transformation in all identities, some of them you live in between. For example, being mestiza and embracing her indigenous, Mexican and U.S. identities are always in flux and very fluid to her. I think this distinction is important to remember. There is no single factor, all of them are working together simultaneously to create the whole person that is in front of you.  

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Part II: “ The New Mestiza Nation”

“We want our histories, our knowledge, our persepctives to be accepted and validated not only in the universities but also in elementary, junior high, and high schools.” (204). From my experiences and perspective, I deeply wished that my education had been radically different. Not only in elementary, middle, and high school, but also when I was studying engineering in college. It was not until university that I was exposed to the real literature, history, and identities of so many of my fellow estadounidenses and community members. In conversation with a friend of mine who is a DACA student and with whom I grew up he mentioned that all throughout our education we never once heard about the role models of color. We never knew Benito Juarez even though the town named after him sits right on the other side of our border or that the country he fought so hard for, Mexico, once owned much of the land in Colorado. We thought to ourselves how much better we could have understood each other if we would have just been exposed to a diverse education that was inclusive and appreciative of Black, Brown, Asian, gay, lesbian, trans, etc. lives and knowledge. 

 The ideas discussed in this essay are not radical, they are the future of a society that is fighting and ready to make the bigoted, racist, classist society the minority in its school of thought. Hearing about her experience in graduate school being told that Chicano literature does not exist in “America” demonstrates how hard she and others in the Latino community have worked in the anglo society to make their history relevant to everyone; even still, this is not the case and so much still must be done. I love how Anzaldúa expresses this as different types of being as the sandbar or bridge or island. Choosing how to participate in this transformation and process of multiculturalism is difficult and requires some balance. Overall, I think that this essay concisely explained some incredibly important topics about multiculturalism and the relationships between whites and people of color. I learned from and appreciated everything she had to say here. 

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Part II: “La vulva es una herida abierta/ The vulva is an open wound”

This creative piece spoke to me through various methods. Firstly, the mix of Spanish and English writing was to me a representation of her identity in napantla. It also reminded me of a video watched at the beginning of the semester when a woman was asked what it means for her to live authentically in her identities as a Chicana and she responds in Spanish and then says that expressing herself in her mother tongue resembles that freedom. The mixed use of language in this piece is something I really enjoy. 

Secondly, her vivid descriptions of the way women and women’s bodies are shamed was very well done. One example she gives is not using the same water to wash her upper and lower body when she is menstruating. This signifies how deeply seeded these beliefs that this natural process in a woman’s body is hated and shamed not only by society, but perpetuated by the women in her life. They comment on how gross their anatomy is, even more so than the men.  She characterizes shame in a way that is metaphorical and physical at the same time. This piece really resonated with me and the knowledge I hold about many culture in which this time for women is ostracizing and uncomfortable both physically and emotionally. I really appreciated this piece and the importance of normalizing such a normal experience by understanding that it is not widely or at all accepted.  

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Part II: “Border Arte”

Before even reading Anzaldúa’s writing, I saw that this exhibit was at the Denver Museum of Natural History and immediately wondered how many people that put together the exhibit, Aztec: The World of Moctezuma, were Chicana/o or Latina/o. Immediately, Anzaldúa confirmes that this experience felt like further colonization because it was learning about her antepasados indígena from white people. It is white washed history and it is not enough to say that at least this part of history is being told, but the process in which it is being told must be questioned as a form of further colonization. The way she describes this is by comparing it to a borderlands space where two cultures are mixing and creating this space where the Aztecs, of which 10,000 still remain in Mexico alive and well, are being taught about to middle class white folks. This resembles the way border arte has been commoditized with all other culture art in the West. “Diversity is being sold...”, writes Anzaldúa. This is something I think about when in any museum gift shop or the airport or anywhere that is trying to commodify a culture in a way that does not help that community’s people and assimilates to the white audience. I appreciate the way that Anzaldúa moves through her revelations during this experience and ultimately lives her authentic self as a Chicana living in nepantla. This discussion inside herself that was written out provides so much context about how individuals of multiple identities living in napantla process it in different ways. 

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Part II: “To(o) Queer Writer - Loca, escritora y chicana”

Anzaldúa immediately begins to disect and reject the language used to describe the sexuality of lesbians, specifically as it is directed towards Chicanas and Latinas. She writes “I am of her group but not as an equal, not as a whole person - my color erased, my class ignored”, which is telling of several things. Firstly, Anzaldúa values whole identities, meaning her spirituality, physical self, sexuality, class, etc. are all important pieces to making one whole. This is why she says that she prefers patlache because it represents her and her background and it is what she is used to hearing in her own community. 

This is an excerpt of her writing about sexuality, labels and being a writer with labels. Society has constructed labels for different reasons and as Anzaldúa has expressed, these labels are being used against someone if they are not taking them for themselves and reinvigorating the real reason for them. This is the main issue with labels and identities is that no identity is more valuable than another and the fear that this could be true and one could lose aspects of themselves slowly but surely to the oppressor is terrifying to Anzaldúa. This is represented in the way she reads and writes and the hyper awareness of the spaces in which these identities and experiences are accounted for or not. Her ideal is to not fall into this anglo trap of the white lesbian tropes and identities that have permeated the writing of queer and lesbian authors. Instead, she sees her writing as a way to deconstruct colonial thinking by exposing them and writing in a meaningful way that asks the reader to think and learn. I really enjoyed this section because Anzaldúa breaks down the divides between the white lesbian and queer, but also within the queer communities that create a more inclusive space to her and others’ identities and queer Chicanas. 

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Part II – Metaphors in the Tradition of the Shaman

In this entry, Gloria Anzaldua is expressing her identity as the Shaman. She is assessing her work in La Frontera/Borderlands as the work of someone carrying the culture of the community. This is something we have discussed in class about Chicanas and Latinas in general being the carriers of culture throughout history. This was seen in Aztec cultures in documentaries watched at the beginning of the course. Throughout, we have seen how Chicanas pass along the tradition, stories, and pastimes of their history and culture. Additionally, Anzaldua focuses on her craft of writing and creating metaphors to break the dead ones her community has been defined by. She is using her power of storytelling and creating a ‘new narrative’ that is empowering and representing her community for what it is, not what colonizers want it to be. These metaphors are a resistance to the colonizer and an agent for change. Her storytelling and writing makes her a Xicanista in many ways.

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GA Reader Part I: Spirituality, Sexuality, and The Body

This writing spoke to me immediately. Gloria talks about the need for balance between connecting with herself and nature, but also connecting with her community. This is a balance I often struggle to find in my own life. I am constantly sped up and forget to nurture my house (as GA refers to it). Another theme in GA’s interviews is the use of books as a way to escape tough realities and to learn more and think more abstractly about the world. This is something I did as a child and helped me through the toughest times. A continued theme I also enjoy of Gloria’s is her wholeness in everything, including sexuality. When asked by the interviewer how sexuality and spirituality interact for her, she comments on the blurring of lines between selves and souls. This view that sexual experiences are spiritual and that all these identities as a sexual and spiritual being are a wholeness of a person is exceptional in the greater context of society. This idea and these words pave the way for a new understanding of the spirit and sexual being to interact as one, in the way Gloria and many others intend. 

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GA Reader Part I – “Dream of the Double-Faced Woman”

This piece by GA is a representation of how she personally feels about the spirit and the flesh. She believes and feels that the two coexist and that one cannot be without the other. She even criticizes Catholicism, the Aztecs and her own origins La Chingada. This part of the passage resonated with me because of her clear association with the chemicals, cells, and atoms that interact to create the flesh and how that creates the soul in a way. The description of flesh and spirit is accompanied by the discussion of sexuality. As discussed in the class extensively, many Chicanas are without the language to describe sexuality and lesbianism especially. GA is attempting to bring this spiritual awareness of oneself to their sexuality. She wants to encourage women to pay attention to what their bodies are telling them and get comfortable within themselves. This is the type of power we have discussed with Chicanas decolonizing themselves and their presentation to the world. She is describing a transformation within oneself that will transform the world through interpersonal relations and connections.

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GA Reader Part I: “Speaking in Tongues”

Gloria Anzaldúa titled this letter/poem/piece of creativity as “Speaking in Tongues” because of the way the world has addressed women of color in writing and their voices in general. She is explicitly addressing the whiteness that refuses to acknowledge Chicana writing in a serious manner. This attitude permeates the education system and creates stereotypes and ideas about Latinos and their languages, in Gloria’s case this is Spanish, that are severely damaging. In her reference to the voice she hears telling her she as a Chicanita from the sticks is not meant in this profession of writing is persistent because of the societal norms and pressures that are conceived of and reinforced by white supremacy. Not only does she explore this topic, but she thoroughly explore tokenism and the need for women of color to avoid acquiescence and the work that white folks need to do in order to prioritize the voices that have been silenced. One great part of the identities she is speaking to is that these stories and wirtings have a purpose and place because of who they are coming from. Being a Chicana writer, she is encouraging others and herself knowing that their writings have a place in the world despite all of the structural and cultural forces that tell them different.