Borderlands La Frontera

Chapter I,“Mas antes en los ranchos” is a series of poems describing the early days of Anzaldúa’s life on the ranch. “White-Wing Season” creates an image of white men with guns filling the silence of the sky with buckshot as they hunt. The Chicana woman hears this from her outpost near the washtub. In “Cervicide,” a young girl is forced to kill a fawn with a hammer to save her father from the game warden. “Horse” describes some white teenagers cutting up a horse and getting away with it, while the Mexicans must keep quiet; if “you’re Mexican/ you’re born old” (129). In “Immaculate, Inviolate: Como Ella,” she describes her grandmother, a woman scarred by a fire, who had lived through drought. A proud and dignified woman, Anzaldúa once asked her: “Have you ever had an orgasm?” (132). “Nopalitos” centers around cooking cactus—both the arduous process and Anzaldúa’s eventual departure from this tradition.

Chapter II,“La Pérdida” presents a brutal depiction of life in the borderlands. “In sus plumas el viento,” Anzaldúa describes the work of her mother and the challenging conditions of her life: “White heat no water no place to pee/the men staring at her ass” (139). In “Cultures,” Anzaldúa recalls digging in the ground for trash, finding “cans of Spam with twisted umbilicals” (142).