By Natalia Arreola, Nonfiction Editor
Have you ever felt out of place? Or have you thought that you do not belong to a specific location? We are in an area full of culture and race. We have our neighboring city El Paso, Texas, along with the entire border unit. Specifically, we find ourselves in a culture shock where its members are used to being divided between cities. I grew up seeing all these cities from afar, thinking I did not belong to where I lived, but rather the place where I was born. I grew up thinking that I would stop feeling divided one day, and I was the only person trapped between two cultures and two countries.
However, that feeling never stopped. I started college in El Paso, and it was inevitable to feel like a stranger in my city. I managed to transfer to New Mexico and still feel like I do not belong there. This doubt started deep within me until I changed my way of interacting with my friends. How could they not feel the same as me? I was unconsciously looking for an answer, and without knowing it, Gloria Anzaldúa answered it with her book Borderlands / La Frontera: The New Mestiza.
Anzaldúa was a native Chicana from Texas, wherein her book she explores a mixture of English and Spanish to define the insecurity of living on the edge. She talks about life on the edge, different identities, cultural history, and how her experience as a Chicana ended up influencing her lifestyle. Borderlands / La Frontera: The New Mestiza touches on the issue of the edge in identity. Anzaldúa shares that we all have multiple identities, such as son/daughter, parent, teacher, student, writer, lover, among other things. All of these are the marks that make us understand the edge, presenting it not as a simple division between here and there, us and them, but as a social and cultural land that we inhabit, and that inhabits all of us.
I cannot speak for the others, but with this book, feeling divided between two worlds was no longer something I had to feel ashamed of it. After processing what Anzaldúa wanted to convey, it made me think that I was not the only one out there that does not belong to a place. Being a feminist woman, she saw herself as an alien in her own family, between two worlds.
I won't be the first or the last to feel divided, but Anzaldúa opened my mind to interpret it as a state of transition instead of a place where it did not belong. If you ever feel as divided as she or I, this book can walk you through a process where the edge is no longer an obstacle or a problem.
This memoir, intertwined with poetry, is a hug for those who feel lost. It is so real that it ends up giving everyone a lesson.
“This land was Mexican once,
was Indian always
and is.
And will be again.”
― Gloria E. Anzaldúa, Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza.
Natalia Arreola is one of DiN's nonfiction editors. She is studying English at New Mexico State University with a concentration in Creative Writing and a minor in Psychology. She is expected to graduate in the Spring of 2021. She is also an editor of a literary journal called Chrysalis and is part of the BorderSenses organization, located in El Paso, Texas. She aspires to become an editor for a publishing house and a successful YA fiction writer.
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