Borderlands

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

Anzaldua is a self-proclaimed borderland beinga Chicana who lives close to the border between Mexico and Texas, who shares several cultures and uses a mixture of languages. With exceptional insight, she creates a mosaic of the marginal person: a person, like herself, who exists in a state of transition, of ambivalence, of conflict; someone who is infused with many cultures yet cannot claim a single one wholly for herself. Her journal is written in earth tones, like an Aztec design, tones that are both engaging and striking. Weaving prose with poetry, Mexican-Indian history with psychology, mythology with philosophy, the author pulls together the frazzled edges of Chicano culture and of her sense of self. Anzaldua is a rebellious and willful talent who recognizes that life on the border``life in the shadows''is vital territory for both literature and civilization. (September)

Library Journal

Anzaldua, a Chicana native of Texas, explores in prose and poetry the murky, precarious existence of those living on the frontier between cultures and languages. Writing in a lyrical mixture of Spanish and English that is her unique heritage, she meditates on the condition of Chicanos in Anglo culture, women in Hispanic culture, and lesbians in the straight world. Her essays and poems range over broad territory, moving from the plight of undocumented migrant workers to memories of her grandmother, from Aztec religion to the agony of writing. Venting her anger on all oppressors of people who are culturally or sexually different, the author has produced a powerful document that belongs in all collections with emphasis on Hispanic American or feminist issues. Andrea Caron Kempf, Johnson Cty. Community Coll. Lib., Overland Park, Kan.