Borderlands/La Frontera By Gloria Anzaldúa

Critical Thinking Questions As you read Anzaldúa’s Borderlands/La Frontera, answer the following questions in a separate piece of paper. Make sure you answer each question with at least one full paragraph (at least four sentences). You should read the chapters first, then go back and answer the questions. Provide a small quote and page number for each of your answers. Preface and Chapter One: The Homeland, Aztlán

1. How does Gloria Anzaldúa conceptualize the borderlands? What are its physical as well as its non-material manifestations? Why does she say that she is a border woman? Explain.

2. Why does Anzaldúa says that the border-fence is a “1950 mile open wound”? Discuss some of the history that Anzaldúa gives in relation to Mexicans and the U.S. Southwest.

3. Discuss Anzaldúa’s short poem at the end of chapter one: “This is her home/ this thin edge of/ barbwire.” What do you think it means?

Chapter Two: Movimientos de rebeldía y las culturas que traicionan

1. Why does Anzaldúa says that she “had to leave home so I could find myself, find my own intrinsic nature buried under the personality that had been imposed on me”? What imposed such personality? What about her “nature” did she find? Discuss what she left behind, and what she kept? Explain.

2. Discuss Anzaldúa’s understanding of “cultural tyranny.” If it is true that “[c]ulture is made by those in power–men. Males make the rules and laws; women transmit them,” this would mean that women are complicit in the reproduction of patriarchy (male domination and privilege). Do you agree with Anzaldúa? Explain.

3. Anzaldúa says that her “identity is grounded in the Indian woman’s history of resistance.” To then say that she seeks “an accounting with all three cultures–white, Mexican, Indian” in order to create her new mestizo (mixed) culture. Discuss Anzaldúa’s view of identity. Why is this accounting difficult for her, as woman and as a lesbian/queer?

4. Why does Anzaldúa claim that “Not me sold out my people but they me”? How did her people “sold” her? Why does she bring up the story of malinche? Do you think that some cultures sometimes betray women?

Borderlands/La Frontera By Gloria Anzaldúa

Critical Thinking Questions As you read Anzaldúa’s Borderlands/La Frontera, answer the following questions in a separate piece of paper. Make sure you answer each question with at least one full paragraph (at least four sentences). You should read the chapters first, then go back and answer the questions. Provide a small quote and page number for each of your answers. Chapter Three: Entering into the Serpent

1. How does Anzaldúa understand the devotion to “la Virgen de Guadalupe” in Chicano and Mexican culture? Accoring to Anzaldúa, what is the connection with indigenous/native spirituality? Explain.

2. Why does an Anzaldúa claim that Chicano/Mexican culture identifies with “the mother”? Who are the “three mothers” “tres madres” of the Chicano people? Explain.

3. Gloria Anzaldúa claims that western culture “made ‘objects’ of things and people when it distanced itself from them thereby losing ‘touch’ with them. This dichotomy is the root of all violence.” Why would this dichotomy/split became the root of violence? How is the making of people into objects the root of violence? Explain.

4. According to Anzaldúa, what is la facultad? Why is it that those who do not feel safe are more likely to develop this faculty/ability? Explain.

Borderlands/La Frontera By Gloria Anzaldúa

Critical Thinking Questions As you read Anzaldúa’s Borderlands/La Frontera, answer the following questions in a separate piece of paper. Make sure you answer each question with at least one full paragraph (at least four sentences). You should read the chapters first, then go back and answer the questions. Provide a small quote and page number for each of your answers. Chapter Four: La herencia de Coatlicue / The Coatlicue State

1. Discuss Anzaldúa’s experience with the mirror. What did she “saw” when she looked into the mirror?

2. After discussing the image/figure of Coatlicue for the Aztecs (Mexica), discuss the “Coatlicue State” as a state/moment of transformation. What forces a person into this critical moment? How does “Coatlicue,” according to Anzaldúa, help us cope with painful experiences?

3. Discuss Anzaldúa’s conception of susto. Can you give an example of “susto”?

Borderlands/La Frontera By Gloria Anzaldúa

Critical Thinking Questions As you read Anzaldúa’s Borderlands/La Frontera, answer the following questions in a separate piece of paper. Make sure you answer each question with at least one full paragraph (at least four sentences). You should read the chapters first, then go back and answer the questions. Provide a small quote and page number for each of your answers. Chapter Five: How to Tame a Wild Tongue

1. Discuss Anzaldúa’s view of language. How is it that “robbing” a people of their language is violent? How can language, according to Anzaldúa, be a “homeland”? What is the connection between identity and language?

2. Discuss Anzaldúa’s view of Chicano/a identity. Why does she say Chicanos/as did not know

they were a people until 1965?

3. Discuss your own understanding of your identity. Has the identity label you use for yourself changed throughout your life, why? How do you know what label to use for yourself? Where does that label come from?

Chapter Six: Tlilli, Tlapalli / The Path of Red and Black ink

1. Discuss Anzaldúa’s view of writing and the artistic creative process. What is the connection between art/writing and personal transformation?

2. According to Anzaldúa, what is the connection between personal change and social change?

What does she mean with: “I change myself, I change the world”?

Borderlands/La Frontera By Gloria Anzaldúa

Critical Thinking Questions As you read Anzaldúa’s Borderlands/La Frontera, answer the following questions in a separate piece of paper. Make sure you answer each question with at least one full paragraph (at least four sentences). You should read the chapters first, then go back and answer the questions. Provide a small quote and page number for each of your answers. Chapter Seven: La conciencia de la mestiza / Towards a New Consciousness

1. Compare and contrast Anzaldúa’s conception of mestizaje with José Vasconcelos’ “cosmic race.”

2. Why does Anzaldúa say that “[a]ll reaction is limited by, and dependent on, what it is

reacting against.” How might it be necessary to move beyond this reactionary stance, in order to deal/heal the different divides or different cultural conflicts?

3. Discuss the following statement: “A massive uprooting of dualistic thinking in the

individual and collective consciousness is the beginning of a long struggle, but one that could, in our best hopes, brings us to the end of rape, of violence, of war.” What is this “dualistic thinking” that must be uprooted?

4. Discuss Anzaldúa’s formulation of the “mestiza consciousness.” How might the mestiza

consciousness break with our limited cultural perception? How does the new mestiza deal with cultural conflict/clash? Why does she mean by “[t]he new mestiza copes by developing a tolerance for contradictions”?