Anzaldúa’s Borderlands exemplifies the notion of transnational literature and understanding that we seek to understand in our course of the same name. She authors her narrative as a transnational subject in the process of redefining the concept of a ‘border’ identity that is created in those liminal spaces where differing people engage in cultural exchange. For this post, I specifically want to focus on Anzaldúas use of language and the effect it achieves. I firmly believe that she gives a new voice to the understanding of what is means to be both a transnational author and subject, outing her experience in a form of unique self-expression. Her amalgamation of Spanish prose and personal anecdotes with her narrative in English is quite intentional, and she blatantly expresses the need for such a juxtaposition early in the text:

“Ethnic identity is twin skin to linguistic identity – I am my language. Until I can take pride in my language, I cannot take pride in myself”… Until I am free to write bilingually and to switch codes without having always to translate, while I still have to speak English or Spanish when I would rather speak Spanglish, and as long as I have to accommodate the English speakers rather than having them accommodate me, my tongue will be illegitimate… I will overcome the tradition of silence” (Anzaldúa 59).

She describes her use of language as a mechanism ‘toward a new consciousness’. This is a solid argument when we take into consideration that culture is created and maintained by the means of storytelling. Hence, relating her culture and experience in strictly the English language when her Spanish and Indian heritage were so intently shaped by the languages she experienced would solely serve to devaluate the authenticity of her lived experiences. As an author of Spanish and Indian descent, the production of a narrative to conform to expectations of an English speaking audience would thus be no more than confirming and accepting the subjugation of transnational identity to that of an English speaking, westernized world.

In this sense, it is not incredulous to argue that Anzaldúa brings into question our own role as students and scholars of transnationalism. We must realize that transnationalism speaks for moving beyond traditional boundaries while examining those areas in between imagined borders that become zones or areas of cultural interrogation. In this case, Anzaldúa contributes to our often discussed idea of so called ‘border zones’ be redefining them as ones that are not limited to fixed spaces between nations. Language becomes the borderland for her, both as a transnational subject and author. It is a boundary between the expected and the lived, the expectation to conform and the reality of lived experiences in need of being legitimized. Her weaving of language and experience of both English and Spanish paints a representation of how liminal spaces are created and negotiated between borders of language. It showcases the exchange between culture and language as a productive one, an exchange that results in a new hybrid identity which cannot be placed within one boundary or another and must be recognized as such.

With that being said, I find it of importance to briefly mention that Anzaldúa not only problematizes this border, but actively attempts to redefine it:

“Subconsciously, we see an attack on ourselves and our beliefs as a threat and we attempt to block with a counter stance. But it is not enough to stand on the opposite river bank, shouting questions, challenging patriarchal, white conventions… At some point, on our way to a new consciousness, we will have to leave the opposite bank, the split between the two mortal combatants somehow healed so that we are on both shores at once and, at once, see through serpent and eagle eyes” (Anzaldúa 78).

While Anzaldúa focuses on a binary opposition between the ‘patriarchal, white’ and her own cultural background and identity, such a clash can be extended to apply to our studies of all transnational literatures. It signifies a first step towards acceptance of ameliorating the dissonance that is dramatically increasing with the advent of globalization and competing fields. It is not dissimilar to the critical position Spivak takes on the growing opposition between area, ethnic, cultural, and comparative literature studies. Relevent here is Spivak’s position that “the proper study of literature may give us entry to the performativity of cultures and instantiated in narrative” (Spivak 13) while still holding an awareness that “crossing borders… is a problematic affair”(Spivak 16). Reading Anzaldúa in this light creates a work that supports Spivak’s position on the cooperation between these formerly divided fields. As Spivak puts it: “we stand outside, but not as anthropologists; we stand rather as reader with imagination ready for the effort of othering, however imperfectly, as an end in itself” (Spivak 13). In other words, being able to fulfill our role as readers and scholars without predetermined expectations highlights the insight one can find in the creation and expression of identity that one would be oblivious to if confined to one specific field of focus. I thus believe that both Anzaldúa’s production of a legitimized identity through interrogating borderlands of language and the reception thereof by us, as readers and scholars of the literature, play an equally important role in our discussion of transnational studies and their role in an ever globalizing context.