Book Review Time!

I've become somewhat of a Chicana studies enthusiast this year, after taking a Chicano/a Literature course this winter. In that class I read several novels from Chicano/a writers, all of which were interesting and enlightening. The most significant thing I took away from that class was the way Chicana writers specifically, fused their awareness of Chicana/Mestiza identity with feminist theory and discourse. I went into my professor and mentor's office and she recommended several other books she thought I should look into, and I've just finished one of them. The book is Borderlands by Gloria Anzaldua. This book is wild, formidable, and though I have no idea if Anzaldua read or appreciated Julia Kristeva's work, I believe this book is preoccupied with a very Kristevian sense of the semiotic self. Gloria Anzaldua ambitiously discusses how la mestiza must straddle three cultures: American, Mexican, and Indigenous, and asserts that what is needed is a "tolerance for ambiguity" and an internalization of the mulitplicity of female selves. She describes this internalization as an internalization of the attributes of the Nahua Goddess, Coatlicue. This is a very sensual, politically and socially conscious book, and I recommend it highly!