Gloria Anzaldúa’s Borderland: La Frontera is a semi-real-life work that comprises text and poems that detail the indiscernible borders that are between Latinas and non-Latinas, males and females, heterosexuals and homosexuals, and various other contrasting crowds. Anzaldúa expounds that her manner of writing involves picking out images from her personality’s judgment, spinning forth the correct words to reconstruct the images (Anzaldua, 96). She asserted that reimaging of certainty in one’s mindfulness is significant because nothing transpires in the actual world lest it first takes place in the images in one’s heads (109). This paper analyzes one of Anzaldúa’s passages containing the aspect of imagery. It gives an explanation of the passage, the application of the image on the text, and the connotation of the picture about the borderlands principal to Anzaldúa’s writing.
Anzaldúa writes “I have a vision of snakes, traitors of the aquatic. Elongated, apparent, in their abdomens they convey everything they can possibly grab from affection. A larger serpent appears as soon as I slaughter one. With additional hell- fire boiling from within” (Anzaldua, 47).
The imagery that Anzaldúa uses in the passage is that of long, transparent serpents. Some of the key images of Mexican spiritual and mythical beliefs that exist is the serpent, la víbora. Anzaldúa, in the above passage carefully brings out the diverse facets; both undesirable and encouraging of La víbora and the manner in which distinct features have influenced her lifespan being a Chicana. She carries on the passage by recognizing the Virgenof Guadalupe, a Catholicism’s renowned pagan objects, over her Indian label Coatlalopeuh, which interpret into a troublemaker, and the female who dresses in a snake skirt respectively.
In writing the above passage, she targeted the region between Mexico and the United States. According to Aztec-Mexican culture, after the journey from Aztlán, females who were capable of possessing belongings were the holy women, and noble kinship ran all through the feminine lineage. Because of doing away with the Coatlalopeuh that she possessed, Guadalupe stayed erased, and did not have the traitor/sexuality characteristic of her character anymore. Her section was reconstructed by male-controlled Aztec-Mexican beliefs that made women individuals secretive by retaining male persons in their dwelling.
The image of serpent functions to disclose something of profound acute importance about the overall text. The traitor’s opening is a representation of womankind, which was protected by layers of treacherous teeth. Anzaldúa also claims that it represented a figure of the obscure, erotic energy, the womanly, the meandering undertaking of sexuality, imagination, and the foundation of all life and energy. She uses the serpent to describe the capability systematically to comprehend in outward phenomena the significance of profound certainties.
Anzaldúa uses term borderland to refer to the visible region that is most vulnerable to amalgamation, neither entirely of Mexico nor completely of the United States. Irrespective of the position she stayed after her desiring and the masculinization of religion, she turned out to be the prevalent symbol in Mexican faith, politics, and principles in the present day, exceeding the standing of Jesus in the lives of the Mexican populace, both in Mexico and in the United States. Chicana beliefs, according to Anzaldúa, no longer associate with the Spanish father, rather with the Indian mother. This is in continuation with the image of the serpent.
Gloria Anzaldúa’s Borderlands/La Frontera’s work follows a disposition of concern, compared to working towards accomplishing categorization. Not only does she repeatedly change from analysis to imagery and fail to identify disciplinary obstacles, but she expresses poetically even when dealing with traditional, political, and communal issues. Imagery is very effectively applied in this piece of work. It assists the reader in understanding and interpreting the different pieces of the work according to their varied levels of comprehension. Furthermore, the connotation of the picture as discussed plays a major role in shaping the readers’ opinion about the work.
Work Cited
Anzaldua, Gloria. Borderlands: La Frontera. . San Francisco, 1987. Print.
