Borderlands La Frontera

“1,950 mile-long open wound

dividing a pueblo, a culture,

running down the length of my body,

staking fence rods in my flesh,

splits me splits me

me raja me raja.

This is my home

this thin edge of barbwire.” 

With these lines of the poem opening Borderlands, Anzaldúa situates the border on her own body, indicating the relationship between self and land, foreshadowing the ways Borderlands is not just a sociocultural critique of the borderland as a geographic, cultural, and psychic space, but a memoir of Anzaldúa’s personal experiences of mestiza life, intersecting identities, and writing.

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

Anzaldúa’s vivid image of the borderland as an open wound where Mexico bleeds against the grate of the United States provides a visceral image of the setting of Borderlands. This image alludes to the material realities of border culture and the physical harm done to Mexicans who attempt to cross the border. In describing a “third country,” Anzaldúa denies the binary of first and third worlds, imagining another space borne from their intersection.

“Fear of going home. And of not being taken in. We’re afraid of being abandoned by the mother, the culture, la Raza, for being unacceptable, faulty, damaged.” 

In Chapter 2, Anzaldúa explicitly addresses her queerness, acknowledging how being a lesbian Chicana creates a unique experience of alienation. The culture that so defines her is also the very thing that shuns her for being different.