To live in the borderlands

What does it mean to live in the Borderlands?

The borderland is transcribed and translated through controversies and initiatives, through fists and kisses, guns and food, it is where you feel a stranger and at home at the same time.

Gloria Anzaldúa writes:

"The actual physical borderland that I'm dealing with in this book is the Texas-U.S Southwest/Mexican border. The psychological borders, the sexual borderlands and the spiritual borderlands are not particular to the Southwest. In fact, the Borderlands are physically present wherever two or more cultures edge each other, where people of different races occupy the same territory, where under, lower, middle and upper classes touch, where the space between two individuals shrinks with intimacy" (1999, preface).

So what does it mean to live in the Borderlands? How does this dual identity work when you are moving between languages, cultures and places? Gloria Anzaldúa writes about the borders as more as simply a line on a map, or a fence dividing two people. Borders exist in all of us, crossings of physical and emotional borders change us, shape who we are, and steers us in the direction we are heading. When reading her work, it feels universal. No matter which side of a border you live on, you are a part of that society. Just as I am and was a part of the Norwegian-Russian border, but I have also lived by the Norwegian-Finish border, and the Norwegian-Swedish border. When you live by several borders, it is hard not to notice the differences. Two borders are open, unless you have something that needs to go through customs, but the nearest one you need to show your passport and papers that show that you are allowed to pass. Crossing a border where people stand around with guns on one side, and where you only see people behind the desk on the other side is weird. In retrospective I know that there were soldiers on both sides watching, but then we did not think of the Norwegian soldiers on the border. I remember driving towards Murmansk, and a Russian soldier hitched hiked with us, because it was a long way to walk to the next city. We had just seen the soldiers standing around with their rifles and looking serious, so we were both a bit scared and a bit excited about it (he did not have a rifle in the car though), but it made the next crossing of the border less scary. I remember hanging around playgrounds in Belomorsk (Беломо́рск). We in the Norwegian group only spoke a few words in Russian, and were fairly good in English, and the Russians could speak a bit of English, but it ended up being a mix of all three languages and a lot of body language. We exchanged a lot of swearing words. That is the nice side of it. We also saw how a lot of those kids lived. We were not rich kids, but there was a clear difference in living standards across the border. I did not know what to expect, but I was shocked the first time I went to Murmansk. You had a row of houses, shops and hotels; on one side it was nice, new and clean, and on the other side it was dirty, wrecked and old.

Gloria Anzaldúa describes a borderland where the citizens inhabit several ethnicities, but they are not accepted by either one. The border seems to be a harsh and unfriendly place, but her poems and writings are also about hope and a call for change.

The poem, To live in the Borderlands means you (Anzaldúa), is a part of a book called Borderlands-La Frontrera, The New Mestiza, which is the book the first quote comes from. The poem sums up what the book is about, namely how to survive the Borderlands. To survive Anzaldúa wants people to fight the status quo, and to fight the urges that can come with hopelessness: "living in the Borderlands you fight hard to resist the gold elixir beckoning from the bottle, the pull of the gun barrel, the rope crushing your hollow of your throat" (Anzaldúa 216-217), "To survive the Borderlands you must live sin fronteras(without borders) be a crossroads"(ibid). You must not give in to hopelessness; you must fight, adapt and accept your dual identity.

The book Everything begins & ends at the Kentucky Club(Sáenz), is also about people living on the Mexican-American border: Júarez and El Paso. It consists of several narratives constructed around the border, both as a metaphor and the physical place. In the first story He has gone to be with the women, there are several representations of the border. Carlos and Javier are talking about the border as a physical space dividing them: