Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza (English Edition)

"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 again, the lifeblood of two worlds merging to form a third country—a border culture.—Gloria Anzaldúa

Rooted in Gloria Anzaldúa's experience as a Chicana, a lesbian, an activist, and a writer, the essays and poems in BORDERLANDS/LA FRONTERA: THE NEW MESTIZA profoundly challenged, and continue to challenge, how we think about identity. BORDERLANDS/LA FRONTERA remaps our understanding of what a "border" is, presenting it not as a simple divide between here and there, us and them, but as a psychic, social, and cultural terrain that we inhabit, and that inhabits all of us.

"The emotional and intellectual impact of the book is disorienting and powerful...all languages are spoken, and survival depends on understanding all modes of thought. In the borderlands new creatures come into being. Anzaldúa celebrates this 'new mestiza' in bold,experimental writing."—The Village Voice

"Anzaldúa's pulsating weaving of innovative poetry with sparse informative prose brings us deep into the insider/outsider consciousness of the borderlands; that ancient and contemporary, crashing and blending world that divides and unites America."—Women's Review of Books

Gloria Anzaldúa was a Chicana-tejana-lesbian-feminist poet, theorist, and fiction writer from South Texas. In addition to authoring BORDERLANDS/LA FRONTERA: THE NEW MESTIZA (Aunt Lute, 1987), she was the editor of the critical anthology MAKING FACE/MAKING SOUL/HACIENDO CARAS (Aunt Lute, 1990) and co-editor of This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color (Persephone, 1981), winner of the Before Columbus Foundation American Book Award. Her works also include Interviews/Entrevistas (Routledge, 2000) and This Bridge We Call Home: Radical Visions for Transformation, edited with AnaLouise Keating (Routledge, 2002). She also authored three bilingual children's books, including Prietita Has a Friend/Prietita tiene un amigo. She taught Creative Writing, Chicano Studies, and Feminist Studies at University of Texas, San Francisco State University, Vermont College of Norwich University, and University of California Santa Cruz. Gloria Anzaldúa passed away in 2004 and was honored around the world for shedding visionary light on the Chicana experience by receiving the National Association For Chicano Studies Scholar Award in 2005. Gloria was also posthumously awarded her doctoral degree in literature from the University of California Santa Cruz. A number of scholarships and book awards, including the Anzaldúa Scholar Activist Award and the Gloria E. Anzaldúa Award for Independent Scholars, are awarded in her name every year.