33 pages • 1 hour read
Gloria E. AnzalduaA modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
For the opening of Anzaldúa’s final chapter, she cites José Vasconcelos and his vision of “una Raza mestiza…a cosmic race” (99). From this, the new mestiza consciousness arises, a consciousness of the borderlands. Chicanos, Anzaldúa argues, embody psychic restlessness and cultural collision; therefore, they have the potential to look beyond the duality of the present world. This mestiza must then be fluid; she must embrace ambiguity and contradiction. According to Anzaldúa, “the work of mestiza consciousness is to break down the subject-object duality that keeps her a prisoner” (102). Only then will violence end.
As a lesbian and Chicana, Anzaldúa pushes back on the notion that she is raceless and cultureless; instead, she argues she is all races and all cultures. She is the act of kneading, always questioning reality as it is. She draws an analogy between the mestiza and corn: both are the product of cross-breeding. As a mestiza, her first step is to take inventory of what she has inherited, choosing to rupture with those histories. She shapes new myths, deconstructing herself, becoming a nahual (in Mexican folk religion, a human who can transform into an animal).
Anzaldúa then parses apart the meaning of machismo, indicating it reveals a sense of racial shame for Chicano men.