"Borderlands/La Frontera"
I've been reading this book for one of my classes, by Gloria Anzalúa.
"The ability to respond is what is meant by responsibiltiy, yet our cultures take away our ability to act-shackle in the name of protection. Blocked, immobilized, we can't move forward, can't move backwards. That writhing serpent movement, the very movement of life, swifter than lightening, frozen.
We do not engage fully. We do not make full use of our faculties. We abnegate. And there in front of us is the crossroads and choice: to feel a victim where someone else is in control and therefore responsible to blame (being a victim and transfering the blame on culture, mother, father, ex-lover, friend, absolves me of responibility), or to feel strong, and, for the most part, in control."
"So don't give me your tenets and your laws. don't give me your luke warm gods. What I want is an accounting with all three cultures-white, mexican, Indian. I want the freedom to carve and chisel my own face, to staunch the bleeding with ashes, to fashion my own gds from my entrails. And if going home is denied me then I will have to stand and cliam my space, making a new culture-una cultura mestiza-with my own lumber, my own bricks and mortar and my own feminist architecture."
This book has made me want to, lesbian marry a woman to get her green card, so she can get into the country. I might as well do something with this American citizenship, before I move to Canada. I recommend this book to anyone who calls themselves a feminist, liberal or of that nature. I recommend knowing the slightest bit of Spanish. I wish I had a translator.
I would do it to.