cepbreed 's review for:

Borderlands / La Frontera: The New Mestiza 5th Edition by Gloria E. Anzaldúa, Norma Elia Cantú, Aída Hurtado

3.0

challenging informative reflective medium-paced

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I’m struggling to form a solid opinion on Anzaldua which actually tracks considering she flip-flopped between opinions throughout her essays. My main issue with her is her hypocrisy. Maybe it was the shrooms she was on while writing this but she calls out white people's cultural appropriation and then encourages white people to adopt ethnic spirituality (Santeria, zen, shamanism etc)… As if she isn't now encouraging the same thing she just condemned. The spirituality piece is part of the theory she has that if they did abandon Western spirituality for the ethnic then they would excise a part of their culture, the part that is overly "sanitary." Dangerous territory there. She makes many sweeping generalizations about white people. Page 76 is where most of this takes place. That said I did enjoy some of her poetry though I will never be able to fully internalize this book. I’m not torn up about that though because it is clear that was her intention, non-Spanish speakers do not have access to some of her writing (which I chose not to force access to through google image translate). I respect that. She never shied away from the visceral, sexual, or obscene. It's that candor that makes her work good.

Of the poems I think "The Cannibal's Cancion," "A Sea of Cabbages," and "To live in the Borderlands means you" were my favorites. 

As someone with mixed heritage a lot of. Anzaldua's writing spoke to me and holds very true even though I am half Asian not Latina.