Dear Gloria Anzaldúa,

     My name is Lorena Flores and I am a senior at Loyola Marymount University.  I

am currently enrolled in a Chicano Studies class studying Chicanas and Latinas in

the U.S. and I have selected you as the person in which to conduct research on for a

website project for the class.  We had to pick an artist, writer or activist.  We have

read a couple books that focus on Chicanas and Latinas in the U.S., but as of now

the two books that we have read I have found them to be quite fascinating because of

the in depth history, ideas and concepts that the two authors provide.  The first book

we read was Chicana Art: The Politics of Spiritual and Aesthetic Altarities by Laura

Elisa Perez and the second book we have read was actually written by you,

Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza. 

     The point of this letter is because I want to inform you about what we have read

and the concepts and terms we have learned.  In Perez’s book we learned a lot about

the spiritual aspect behind Chicana artists work.   Chicana artists weren’t only

making, creating and recreating art for art sake but rather engaging in spiritual

world with their own social struggles such as sexuality, gender, class and race.  They

did this to challenge what the mainstream labeled and titled art to be and what it

should like look.   Many of the artwork done by Chicanas was not only controversial

but also aesthetically pleasing.   To most Chicana artists the “spiritual” is not an

abstract or romantic notion.  It is more about the spirit connecting with the

struggle, history, and social reality with each piece of art.  For many of the Chicana

artists it was about respecting religion and the “more ghostly status of egalitarian

forms of spirituality in the U.S. culture.”

For many of these images created by these Chicana artists their motive was to

conjure and reimagining the traditions of spiritual belief traditions and cultural

differences.  With this notion, Perez starts to describe the healing of the cultural

susto, “frightening,” of the spirit from one’s body-mind in the colonial and

neocolonial ordeals.  Perez calls this the result of the “in-between” state of

Nepantla.  Perez then goes more into depth about the state beyond Nepantla.  The

concept/term Nepantla was a word which I am sure you are well aware of since you

came up with it.  In Perez’s book she describes your work as the image and written

or spoken word are inseparably linked and as the image and spoken word are in the

functioning of the Mesoamerican glyph (pictograph/ideogram).   Perez also stated a

quote from which you have made that I found to be intriguing, “to write, to be a

writer, I have to trust and believe in myself as a speaker, as a voice for the images,”

and that when writing, “it feels like I’m creating my own face, my own heart- a

Nahuatl concept…my soul makes itself through the creative act.”  I agree with you

that one must be comfortable with themselves and  truly feel what they are writing

or creating because the message is more clear when the creator/artist/writer has an

understanding of what they are doing in the first place.   There are a few Chicana

artists that Perez mentions that use and interpret Nepantla into their artwork, such

as, Frances Salome Espana and Yreina D. Cervantez.  Cervantez uses a Nepantla in

her lithograph triptych.   In this triptych, Cervantez aims to undermine racist and

sexist histories of representation that inform the fields of visual art in which she

works.   Cervantez has three panels in which she defines and introduces Nepantla. 

In the first panel, Cervantez introduces nepantlism as an ongoing struggle between

two cultural legacies through their perception.  Cervantez uses several symbolic

objects and images of the spiritual and social ideals that balance between all beings. 

The second panel, Mi Nepantla, has a women with her eyes closed as she is in

meditation, her cheeks are like that of Coyolxauqui, who is a warrior daughter of

Coatlicue.  Cervantez says that the cheeks of this woman are like her own

fragmentation as a Chicana artist through a continuum of gendered and racialized

cultural losses that the lithograph pictographically document.   The third panel,

Beyond Nepantla, as described in Perez book is an “image that demands our view is

the dark spiral of the feathered serpent, the glyph of Quetzacoatl, a man-God

representing both wisdom and the arts, and the unity of the spiritual and the

material.”  Cervantez believes that the different cultures she uses are signifying

systems in a process like that of your book Borderlands in how it argues for the

value of expanding our perspectives particularly with respect to cultural difference.

     Well, that was just one example of how Nepantla was used in art as interpreted by

Yreina D. Cervantez.  Another concept that we learned about was actually from your

book, Borderland/La Frontera: The New Mestiza, In chapter two , Movimientos de

rebeldia y las culturas que traicionan, you talk about the concept of Intimate

Terrorism: Life in the Borderlands.  I loved this section of your book because it was

deep and made me think a lot about who I am and the world I live in.  Women have

lived in a world where they are not valued but rather degraded, raped and treated as

nonhuman beings.  The borderland that you describe, I interpret it as a Chicana who

lives in a world where whiteness prevails.  The border is not a real border as in states

or countries but rather within oneself and another culture.   Being a Chicana in

America does make me feel like I am alienating my mother culture at times and does

make me feel unsafe in my life within my inner self in the dominant culture.  Los

intersticios, the spaces between the different worlds I inhabit, is just what Perez

mentioned as the “in between” state of Nepantla.  I like when you talk about being

immersed in your culture because there are many Chicanas who stray away from

their mother culture because they assimilate into white culture.  I can relate to what

you said when you talk about separating yourself from your culture (as from your

family) you had to feel competent enough on the outside and secure enough inside

to live life on your own.  It’s not necessarily about leaving your culture because you

are forever indebted to it and it’s in your system, and that’s how I feel, lo mexicano is

in my system.  Although, we can defend our culture as you describe, I believe

sometimes we, Chicanas, do want our freedom and to be able to chisel and carve our

own face.  I believe your words are very powerful because after reading the line

about if you are denied then you will claim your own space and make your new

culture with your own lumber, bricks and mortar and feminist architecture,

empowered me to be my own person and stand firm in what I believe.

     Well, I have told you a little about what we have been learning in our class and

how I interpret these concepts and terms.  Ironically, I have been doing research on

you so I understand your work as being interesting and intriguing.  I have been

doing a lot of research about your work, such as your books and activist roles within

the Chicana community, feminist community, and the gay/lesbian community.   

Your work has been described as not only spiritual but also that you add a mystical

nature to the process of your writing.  I also have read that your work in

Borderlands is a personal narrative and of your struggle and journey to find your

own identity and the anger and confusion that came with it.  With some of the

research I have done I read how your work in Borderlands is basically a close-up

and distanced view into your life of alienation and isolation as a prisoner in the

borderlands between cultures.   One way I can relate both books that I have read in

class is that with your spirituality, you wrote in Borderlands: My spirituality I call

spiritual mestizaje, you think that your philosophy is like philosophical mestizaje

where you take from all different cultures -- for instance, from the cultures of Latin

America, the people of color and also the Europeans.  I have read that because you

believes that language and identity are inextricably linked, your writing often

engages in daring narrative innovations intended to reflect the inclusivity of the

mestiza identity: by shifting between and combining different genres, points of view,

and even languages.   I’ve also read that you attempt to represent the mestiza's

propensity to "shift out of habitual formations . . . [and] set patterns." In this way,

your narrative literalizes your ideal of "border crossing." I believe this somewhat

relates to your concept of Nepantla in Perez’s book referring to Chicana artists and

their work.   Your writing works against hegemonic structures that limit individual

expression or impose stereotypes based on race, gender, nationality, or sexual

orientation which relates to your intimate terrorism.   In Borderlands you introduce

the concept of mestizaje, or hybridity, and inscribe a serpentine movement through

different kinds of mestizaje of races, genders, languages, and the mind/body

dichotomy. These mestizajes break down dualisms in the production of a third thing

that is neither the one nor the other but something else: the Mestiza, Chicano

language, the lesbian and gay, and the writing that "makes face."  I believe it is this

that breaks down the stereotypes of Chicanas.  Their spiritual and intimate

terrorism is about the new Mestiza.  I hope you have enjoyed my letter just as much I

have enjoyed learning about you!

Sincerely,

Lorena Flores