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260 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1987
This land was Mexican once,
was Indian always
and is.
And will be again. [...]
The U.S-Mexican border es una herida abierta where the Third World grates against the first and bleeds. And before a scab forms it hemorrhages again, the lifeblood of two worlds merging to form a third country — a border culture.
Deslenguadas. Somos las del español deficiente. We are your linguistic nightmare, your linguistic aberration, your linguistic mestisaje, the subject of your burla. Because we speak with tongues of fire we are culturally crucified. Racially, culturally and linguistically somos huérfanos —we speak an orphan tongue.
Her first step is to take inventory. Despojando, desgranando, quitando paja.
Just what did she inherit from her ancestors? This weight on her back—which is the baggage from the Indian mother, which the baggage from the Spanish father, which the baggage from the Anglo?
Pero es dificil differentiating between lo heredado, lo adquirido, lo impuesto.
She puts history through a sieve, winnows out the lies, looks at the forces that we as a race,
as women, have been part of. Luego bota lo que no vale, los desmientos, los desencuentos,
el embrutecimiento. Aguarda el juicio, hondo y enraízado, de la gente antigua. This step is a conscious rupture with all oppressive traditions of all cultures and religions. She communicates that rupture, documents the struggle. She reinterprets history and, using new symbols,
she shapes new myths. She adopts new perspectives toward the darkskinned, women and queers.
She strengthens her tolerance (and intolerance) for ambiguity. She is willing to share,
to make herself vulnerable to foreign ways of seeing and thinking. She surrenders all notions of safety, of the familiar. Deconstruct, construct. She becomes a nahula, able to transform herself into a tree, a coyote, into another person. She learns to transform the small "I"
into the total Self. Se hace moldeadora de su alma. Según la concepción que tiene de sí misma así será.