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Borderlands
Chicana/o is a term for people of Mexican descent living in the U.S. (“Chicana” is the feminine form and “chicano” is the masculine form.) Anzaldúa’s work emerged from major Chicano political movements of the mid-20th century and helped spur a new world of Chicana feminist scholarship and activism, which continues to grow today.
Chicana/o Quotes in Borderlands / La Frontera
The Borderlands / La Frontera quotes below are all either spoken by Chicana/o or refer to Chicana/o. For each quote, you can also see the other terms and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
).
Part 1, Section 2: Movimientos de rebeldía y las culturas que traicionan
Quotes
Pero he crecido. Ya no sólo paso toda mi vida botando las costumbres y los valores de mi cultura que me traicionan. También recojo las costumbres que por el tiempo se han provado y las costumbres de respeto a las mujeres. But despite my growing tolerance, for this Chicana la guerra de independencia is a constant.
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Explanation and Analysis:
Part 1, Section 3: Entering into the Serpent
Quotes
La gente Chicana tiene tres madres. All three are mediators: Guadalupe, the virgin mother who has not abandoned us, la Chingada (Malinche), the raped mother whom we have abandoned, and la Llorona, the mother who seeks her lost children and is a combination of the other two.
Part 1, Section 5: How to Tame a Wild Tongue
Quotes
Because we are a complex, heterogeneous people, we speak many languages. Some of the languages we speak are:
1. Standard English
2. Working class and slang English
3. Standard Spanish
4. Standard Mexican Spanish
5. North Mexican Spanish dialect
6. Chicano Spanish (Texas, New Mexico, Arizona and California have regional variations)
7. Tex-Mex
8. Pachuco (called caló)
So, if you want to really hurt me, talk badly about my language. Ethnic identity is twin skin to linguistic identity—I am my language. Until I can take pride in my language, I cannot take pride in myself. Until I can accept as legitimate Chicano Texas Spanish, Tex-Mex and all the other languages I speak, I cannot accept the legitimacy of myself. Until I am free to write bilingually and to switch codes without having always to translate, while I still have to speak English or Spanish when I would rather speak Spanglish, and as long as I have to accommodate the English speakers rather than having them accommodate me, my tongue will be illegitimate.
Get the entire Borderlands / La Frontera LitChart as a printable PDF.
Chicana/o Term Timeline in Borderlands / La Frontera
The timeline below shows where the term Chicana/o appears in Borderlands / La Frontera. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
Part 1, Section 1: The Homeland, Aztlán / El otro México
Anzaldúa quotes the Los Tigres del Norte song “El otro México,” which is about Chicanos building a new version of Mexico north of the border, and historian Jack D. Forbes,...
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Part 1, Section 2: Movimientos de rebeldía y las culturas que traicionan
Cultural Tyranny. Anzaldúa describes how Chicano culture teaches women to obey men. For most women, there are only three options: nun,...
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...rebel, and native people’s history of resisting colonization inspires Anzaldúa to choose rebellion. While many Chicanas who grow up less immersed in the culture feel they have to defend its faults,...
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...woman who helped the Spaniards conquer Mexico, is an archetype for treason in Mexican and Chicano culture. But this story is also used to blame the community’s problems on Indigenous women,...
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Part 1, Section 3: Entering into the Serpent
Recalling the altar her grandmother kept in the kitchen, Anzaldúa describes the Mexican and Chicano “folk Catholicism” that predominates today and centers on Coatlalopeuh, or the Virgin of Guadalupe. This...
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Anzaldúa argues that Chicano people have three mothers: Coatlalopeuh, la Llorona, and la Chingada (Malintzín). The church has used...
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Part 1, Section 5: How to Tame a Wild Tongue
...tongue?” In school, she was punished for speaking Spanish, and in college, she and other Chicano students were forced to take accent-reduction classes. “Wild tongues can’t be tamed,” she concludes, just...
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...men. There is no similar expectation for boys. To talk about a group of themselves, Chicana women even use the masculine “nosotros” instead of the feminine “nosotras.”
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Oye cómo ladra: el lenguaje de la frontera. Many people treat Chicano Spanish as a deficient form of the language, or even as a mixture of Spanish...
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Chicano Spanish. Chicano Spanish’s pronunciation and vocabulary differ from standard Spanish; many of its traits are...
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Linguistic Terrorism. Anzaldúa calls Chicano Spanish an “orphan tongue.” Chicana women often internalize the belief that their language is illegitimate...
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...is also a way to “overcome the tradition of silence” that has so long limited Chicana women.
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...corridos, y comida: My Native Tongue. Anzaldúa felt “pure joy” when she first discovered bilingual Chicano fiction and poetry, but throughout her career, colleagues and advisors have treated Chicano literature as...
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Si le preguntas a mi mamá, “¿Qué eres?” Chicanos generally call themselves “mexicanos,” but they use this word to refer to race and culture,...
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Part 1, Section 7: La conciencia de la mestiza / Towards a New Consciousness
...loving or joining in solidarity with its women. She rejects the patriarchy of Anglo and Chicano culture but is building a new, better culture full of new meanings. If successful, this...
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...own feelings of shame and powerlessness. Often, these feelings stem from historical oppression, especially for Chicano men, who find both Anglo and Latino culture rejecting them. But understanding these root causes...
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Somos una gente. In a short Spanish-language poem, Chicana writer Gina Valdés says that for every border that divides people, there is also a...
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El día de la Chicana. “I will not be shamed again,” Anzaldúa writes, “Nor will I shame myself.” She envisions...
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Looking at her mother’s rose garden, Anzaldúa notes that Chicanos and Chicanas always grow things. She remembers planting, harvesting, and replanting watermelons in the yard,...
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Part 2, Section 2: La pérdida
...describes Anzaldúa’s mother, to whom it is dedicated, working in the fields. She discovers another Chicana woman, Pepita, having sex with the Anglo boss in a ditch. She works on, weeding...
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...up the workers, who look empty and defeated. The narrator reveals that she is a Chicana from the Rio Grande Valley now teaching in Muncie, Indiana. She has come to repair...
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One of the students’ fathers, who is also a Chicano from the Rio Grande Valley, tells the narrator of “El sonavabitche” that the men are...
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Part 2, Section 3: Crossers y otros atravesados
...no fui, fue Teté (I Didn’t Go, It Was Teté). In this Spanish-language poem, a Chicano man who works as a sex worker goes out at night, and a group of...
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Part 2, Section 4: Cihuatlyotl, Woman Alone
Cihuatlyotl, Woman Alone. Anzaldúa tells Raza (the Chicano race) that, despite its efforts to hold onto her, she has insisted on aloneness. She...
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Part 2, Section 6: El Retorno
...people) to rise up and fight for a “Mundo Zurdo”—a left-handed world. In this quest, Chicanas will set the fields alight and rush into the purple flames, avenge their native ancestors...
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...the mill that tries to crush them into kernels and bake them into white bread, Chicanas must “live sin fronteras”—without borders—and “be a crossroads.”
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...family land, including the cemetery, but the women in her family will never lose their “mexicana-Chicana-tejana” pride or “Indian woman’s spirit.” They will be around long after the Anglos have fought...
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