In the poem “To Live in the Borderlands”, Gloria Anzaldua speaks about “the Borderlands” as both the land surrounding a border (presumably between the U.S. and Mexico due to the juxtaposition of Spanish and English) and a personal direction for processing feelings of being from multiple cultures. The aforementioned usage of Spanish and English interchangeably is sometimes to insert words that do not have accurate translations in English and to simply translate the English words (“To live in the Borderlands/Cuando vives en la frontera”). In both situations, though, this juxtaposition appears to highlight the difference and difficulty between switching languages rapidly in the same way that being multicultural might cause a confusion of identity, especially in the context of a society like the U.S. that integrates elements of other cultures just as easily as it rejects them (i.e. elements of other cultures being strong in many sections of the U.S., sometimes existing alongside intense xenophobia and racism towards them).
In this context, the poem rejects the notion that this means defeat. Anzaldua does not hide the pain of this dilemma, exploring violence (“the mill with the razor…”) and addiction (“fight hard to resist the gold elixir beckoning from the bottle…”), but the poem ends with a more hopeful message: “To survive the Borderlands/you must live sin fronteras/be a crossroads.” Because the Spanish translates to “without borders”, I believe that Anzaldua is arguing that in order to fight against a society that defines culture, identity, and citizenship as being separated by borders, you must internalize the notion that borders do not exist, welcoming everything else in.
CITATIONS
Anzaldúa, Gloria. “To Live in the Borderlands.” Power Poetry, www.powerpoetry.org/content/live-borderlands.