JE #9

1. The historical borderlands section of the course has taught me so much about my roots and just exactly where it is that I come from. One particular aspect I feel I have learned the best is this place of Nepantla, an in-between land. Although I was very aware of it before coming into this class, I have realized that I am not the only one in this space and that I am very fortunate to know that it is ok for me to be lost Nepantla. Yet one specific part of the U.S-Mexico history that I did not know before this class, was the governmental restriction of certain genders and sexualities at the border. As Lubheid and the class have taught me, the U.S government deliberately prohibited certain women (e.g. Chinese women in assumption that they’re prostitutes) and Lesbians (as demented sexual deviants) in order to preserve the developing “White” nation.  

2. One of Gloria Anzaldua’s theories that reside with me is “The Coatlicue State,” in which “refusal to know some truth about [oneself] brings on that paralysis, depression” (Anzaldua, 70). This particular stage of mestiza consciousness is somewhere I feel I have visited a couple of times throughout my life (as I have crossed several things). One particular moment I feel like I was at the Coatlicue stage was my first year here at UCLA, where I became dis-eased with anxiety attacks in my internal fight with admitting my queerness. It was a long and strenuous battle but eventually I came out of it and allowed myself to confront myself and accept me for who I am. This theory of accepting duality and accepting the contradictory resides powerfully in me because all my life I was told to “choose one,” in regards to ethnicity, sexuality, language, etc. That is why I connect to the pain Azaldua describes in this stage, but more importantly, I connect to the enlightenment that follows the pain and the responsibility of the consciousness that comes with it.  

3. I feel like I have a good understanding of Anzaldua’s theories, I just don’t know how to necessarily carry out the 6^th stage where we share our story and transcend the black ink into the red ink. I know that there are different mediums of expression for me at least they consist of writing and dancing, but how do I get to the red ink? I continually write in English, dance in technique of the colonizer, what does it take for my ink to be red?

5. I do not know if I will ever be completely “conscious,” but I feel like my current state of mind is exponentially more conscious than my mindset a couple of years ago. Every day I learn something new, and confront an “-ism” I never knew existed. Yet in terms of Anzaldua’s enlightening process of Mestiza Consciousness, I would say that I have slowly been entering the serpent and embracing the femininity homophobia and patriarchy stripped from me at birth. With the acceptance of my queer identity and continual hunger for consciousness, I have found that my expression of several things like love, anger, etc. have changed and become more fluid. My whole childhood consisted of the suppression of my natural mannerisms and sayings and now I am regaining them and using them to tell my story. As a dancer in a very gender binary community, embracing both the masculine and the feminine has made me so much stronger and has expanded my creative visions for choreography beyond belief. Books like Borderlands, Desert Blood, and Rain God, give me narratives that connect to me personally and to the political contexts of the course. Really, every single character in this course has enabled me to shed so much and allowed me to grow as a Chicano by analyzing their life choices and comparing them to my own. Particularly characters that are students, like Ismael connect to me because they experience similar things that we experience as brown students in a very prestigious university. Often times I ask myself “what do I do?” in certain situations where the brown and white world collide (often times against our will). These texts have provided me with much background as to what exactly I can do for myself, but more importantly the community that is suffering with me.