Reading Anzaldua’s book, I remembered the first class of our seminar in which the board was divided into four concepts and below them, there were some words. Transnational was the first concept and after the brainstorm there appeared words like “change in location”, “immigration”, “economic policies” and “exile/expatriate.” It was complicated for me to relate these words with and have a clear idea of how to mix them in order to get the “Transnational” meaning, however after works like Open City and Borderlands, those words began to make sense and I think I am approaching this concept. I could notice that both texts mention the “open” word to define a place, Cole uses it even as the title of his book and I think it is not by chance. He wanted to prove that everybody can feel isolated and with no identity in a city like New York, an open city. When Julius walks along the city, it is for him like walking in an opened country, it means, a big extension around his house where the landscapes overlap with one another, with one being unsecure and inhospitable. Also Anzaldúa talks about an “open” wound in her work. Aída Hurtado and Norma Cantú comment on this in their introduction“Living in the borderlands: The life of Gloria Anzaldúa”;

“The U.S- Mexican border es una herida abierta (it is a wound) where the Third World grates against the first and bleeds. And before a scab forms it hemorrhages again, the lifeblood of two worlds merging to form a third country-a border country.”

Anzaldúa has an open wound but knows that convergence has created a border culture, a third country, a closed country. Paradoxically her wound is opened in a close country. This play on words of close vs open makes me think about both the importance of the language in the Anzaldúa´s work and the meaning of these concepts. Her language is an important feature of her experience and she constructs her own lens by her writing style. Other than open vs close, her poems and narratives not only show her mestizaje, but the idea of mixing Spanish, English and Indian tell us about the way she was jailed between three cultures. When reading an article about Herta Müller, recipient of the Nobel Prize in literature in 2009, I understood better why Anzaldúa wanted to show her experience through her poetry. Müller explains that  poetry is the most concentrated way to express small sparkles of emotions and states that literature doesn’t understand borders. Then, I realize the big importance of her language.

The meaning of concepts like identity, solitude, home, freedom, duality, and faculty–the capacity to see in surface phenomena the meaning of deeper realities–are vital. Precisely, one of these realities reminds me of another word mentioned in class, “in between”, deeply analized by Bhabha. Anzaldúa denominates it “borderland”and she named herself a border woman in her anguish, myths and incomprehensions of her life due to that fact that she is involved in three worlds-white, mexican and indigenous. Her hybridity makes me think of my life and how different the US culture is from mine. I am not in Spain but I do not belong to the American culture because my identity and culture are Spanish but something has changed since I have been here because I had to adapt myself into another culture (in which I am living). Then, sometimes, I feel like I am “in between” two realities or in a third world: neither Spain nor US, but a new one that I(re)create every day. In terms of Anzaldúa, you carry your home–with all your experiences– like a turtle.

I also experienced this feeling/idea with a movie that I saw the other day, “In Between Days” by So Yong Kim. This movie deals with two Korean teenagers that live in some city in North America and the female character, Aimie, struggles to find a place outside herself where the past–South Korea– and future—US– connect, and a place within herself where friendship and love do not cancel each other out. Anzaldúa states that living in the border produces knowledge inside a system whereas the knowledge is retained outside the system and Aimie lives in the border and talks to her dead father, -like Anzaldúa also does through the indigenous ritual- whereas the boy is called Tran, coincidence or not,  reminds me of the short name of Transnationalism.

All of these experiences through movies, articles and life experiences add to Anzaldúa´s words by themselves, what they mean and how they are written are the best engagement to figure out the concept of Transnationalism. Also, I agree with Cantú and Hurtado’s introduction when they confirm that her ideas are applied to different socio politic realities.