Borderlands/La Frontera

Citation

Anzaldúa, G. (2022). Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza (5th ed.). Aunt Lute Books. (Original work published 1987)

Chapter Summary

Borderlands/La Frontera is a short book of about 200 pages that combines essays and poems. The first edition appeared in 1987 from Spinsters/Aunt Lute, and Aunt Lute Books has issued revised editions since, the fourth in 2012 and the fifth in 2022; the front matter changes from edition to edition (the fourth, for example, adds an introduction by Norma E. Cantú and Aída Hurtado, an editor's note and an interview), while the core is stable. The blurb for the 2012 edition presents the book as rooted in Anzaldúa's experience as a Chicana, a lesbian, an activist and a writer, and as remapping what a "border" is: not a simple divide between here and there but a psychic, social and cultural terrain that people inhabit and that inhabits them. Spanish, English and Nahuatl titles alternate throughout, and the contents fall into two parts: seven prose chapters under the heading "Atravesando fronteras / Crossing Borders", and a sequence of poems under "Un agitado viento / Ehécatl, the Wind".

Preface to the First Edition

Anzaldúa's own preface to the first edition, which the fourth edition's contents list ahead of the seven chapters.

Chapter 1: The Homeland, Aztlán / El otro México

The first chapter of "Atravesando fronteras / Crossing Borders". The title places the book's setting in the homeland of Aztlán and "the other Mexico", the borderlands from which the later chapters speak.

Chapter 2: Movimientos de rebeldía y las culturas que traicionan

The title, "movements of rebellion and the cultures that betray", points to a chapter about rebellion and about cultures experienced as betraying those who belong to them.

Chapter 3: Entering into the Serpent

The title speaks of entering into the serpent. The contents give no further description, and the chapter is best read together with Chapter 4, whose title names Coatlicue.

Chapter 4: La herencia de Coatlicue / The Coatlicue State

Treats the "Coatlicue state", a term that gives the chapter its name and that recurs among the book's key ideas.

Chapter 5: How to Tame a Wild Tongue

A chapter on language. Its title and the book's use of several languages point to language as a central concern.

Chapter 6: Tlilli, Tlapalli / The Path of the Red and Black Ink

Takes its title from a Nahuatl phrase for "red and black ink" and links it to a "path", suggesting a chapter about writing.

Chapter 7: La conciencia de la mestiza / Towards a New Consciousness

The chapter that gives the book its subtitle, "The New Mestiza": its title announces a "new consciousness" for the mestiza. It closes the prose section.

Un agitado viento / Ehécatl, the Wind

The second part is a cycle of poems: "Más antes en los ranchos", "La Pérdida", "Crossers y otros atravesados", "Cihuatlyotl, woman alone", "Animas" and "El retorno". Ehécatl is a Nahuatl name for the wind.

Notes and Back Matter

The fourth edition adds notes, an appendix reprinting an earlier introduction, an introduction to the second edition by Sonia Saldívar-Hull, an interview and a selected bibliography; the fifth edition's front and back matter differs.

Key Concepts

Part One: Atravesando fronteras / Crossing Borders

• Borderlands: in the library description, a terrain that is psychic, social and cultural as well as geographical.
• Aztlán and El otro México: the homeland named in the first chapter's title.
• The Coatlicue state: the idea named in the fourth chapter's title.
• Language as a subject: the "wild tongue" of the fifth chapter's title.
• Mestiza consciousness: the "new consciousness" in the title of Chapter 7 and the "New Mestiza" of the subtitle.

Part Two: Un agitado viento / Ehécatl, the Wind

• Atravesados: the "crossers", people who cross borders, in the title of one poem.
• Poems in a second part: the book gives the second half of its structure to a cycle of poems, with Spanish and English titles.

Critical Analysis

Strengths

• Form matches subject. The book moves between essay, autobiography and poetry and between English and Spanish, so its structure is part of its argument that borders are lived rather than abstract. The 2012 edition's blurb says its essays and poems "profoundly challenged, and continue to challenge, how we think about identity".
• Short and rereadable. With seven chapters and a poem sequence in roughly 200 pages, the book can be read in a few sittings and revisited by chapter, which suits a course where it is read alongside longer theoretical works.
• Lasting presence. The book has stayed in print through five editions since 1987, and its titles supply terms (borderlands, the Coatlicue state, the new mestiza) that a course on postcolonial and ethnic literature can use as handles for close reading.
• Editions that explain themselves. The fourth edition adds an interview, a bibliography and introductions by later scholars, which helps a reader place the book in its time.

Limitations

• Bilingual and multilingual text. The chapter titles alternate between Spanish, English and Nahuatl, and the prose and poems do the same, so readers without Spanish will need a translation aid or a commentary; there is no way around this, and it is part of the book's method.
• Not a systematic theory. It is a blend of essay, memoir and poem rather than a sustained scholarly argument, so readers wanting definitions, evidence and counter-arguments will need the theoretical works in the course.
• Editions differ. Page numbers, front matter and extra material differ across the 1987, 1999, 2007, 2012 and 2021–2022 printings, so students should check page references against the edition their instructor uses.
• A specific location and moment. The book is rooted in Chicana experience in the US-Mexico borderlands of the 1980s; applying its terms to other regions needs care.

Where It Fits in the Course

Within the postcolonial and ethnic literature list, Borderlands/La Frontera is the one text that is itself creative and personal writing rather than an introduction or critical study. John McLeod's Beginning Postcolonialism is an undergraduate introduction to the field and Elleke Boehmer's Colonial and Postcolonial Literature is a critical and historical introduction to writing in English; either gives the vocabulary of colonialism, resistance and hybridity against which Anzaldúa's different vantage can be read. Edward Said's Culture and Imperialism studies the relationship between modern Western empires and the culture they produced, especially the novel, and Ashcroft, Griffiths and Tiffin's The Empire Writes Back is a theoretical account of post-colonial writing in English; the second examines how literatures from places such as India, Africa, the Caribbean, Australia and Canada respond to colonial power through language and textual strategies, which makes a useful comparison with Anzaldúa's concern for language.

Monique Truong's novel The Book of Salt is the closest companion in kind: a debut novel about a Vietnamese cook in interwar Paris, dealing with exile, identity and desire. Reading it after Anzaldúa lets a student compare a US-Mexico borderland with a French colonial one.

How to Use This Book

The book suits undergraduates meeting postcolonial and ethnic literature, as well as readers in Chicana/o, gender and cultural studies. No prerequisite is needed, though some Spanish helps.

A practical plan:

• Core: Chapters 1, 5 and 7 give the book's setting, its attention to language and its central idea; read them first.
• Then: Chapters 2 to 4 and 6, in order, and the poems of the second part, reading them aloud if possible.
• With a guide: Read McLeod or Boehmer for background first if the vocabulary of postcolonial studies is new, and read the editions' introductions after the chapters, not before.
• To test the ideas: Choose a passage that mixes languages and write a short note on what the mixing does that a single language could not.