Borderland La Frontera Analysis

Borderland/La Frontera, the new Mastiza and The Woman Warrior are books that give the biography of two accomplished women writers; Gloria Anzaldua and Maxine Hong Kingston respectively. The two writers share their stories in a way that highlight their history and culture. Through their experience and that of women around them, they champion for the rights of women by fighting the cultural stereotypes imposed on women by their patriarch society. Gloria Anzaldua’s Borderland/La Frontera highlights her struggle and that of Chicanos in search of identity that seems illusive in their world. It talks of the physical border between the United States and Mexico where she was born where political legitimacy is disputed based on color and language; A

However, women were seen as perpetuators of men supremacy and are used in passing down the culture (borderland, 39). One common method used to enforce this was to ensure that women never spoke. Anzadula says that girls were not supposed to talk back to their parent. They were also expected not to be talkative. Similarly, in the woman warrior, “no name woman” bore the wrath of the villagers in silence without uttering the name of the man who sired her child. Kingston particularly gets mad about this silence and even attacks the silent sister at the lavatory reminding her that she was not going to be a housewife. Anzadula herself claims that she will no longer be ashamed of her existence and will use her own “serpent tongue” to overcome the traditional silence (81). The two authors show that their culture had defined role for women. Anzaldua claims that hers expected a Mastiza to turn to church as a nun, to streets as prostitute or to home as a mother. In all these they are seen to be under male dominance because just as a nun is below a priest, a prostitute uses her body for male canal gratification and a wife serve and take care of the husband. In Kingston culture, a woman would either become a wife or a slave. The two started fighting this vice at their tender age by showing defiance to what was considered a woman’s “work”. Anzaldua would read and paint instead of ironing clothes for her sibling while Kingston would refuse to cook and when forced to clean she would break a dish or two. Anzadula in her rebellion against these cultures proposes that a woman could turn to education and career as a fourth path; a path that Kingston herself chose to take; a path that eventually made them liberal to talk against the silence and border that the culture places them in their