To live in the borderlands

Reflection

It started as an academic essay about the Mexican-American border, but when I read about the Borderlands, I remembered that I too come from a Borderland, and that is why it ended up as something else. When your head is in the books, you sometimes forget the life you have once lived. In my responses on It's learning, I have focused mainly on the texts themselves, reading from what I thought was an objective, or distant view when it comes to migration. This exam has been just as much about learning and processing migrant fiction as about self-(re-)discovery.

Writing about issues concerning a society that looks at whites as privileged, looks at me as privileged feels complicated. Junot Díaz often talks about "white supremacy" (Díaz on Immigrants, Masculinity, Nerds, & Art, and Art,Race and Capitalism, YouTube. Web 29 May 2015).What is white supremacy? It is the notion that having white skin-colour gives you certain privileges. The stereotype is white, male, straight and middle aged. I am white. That is the one category that I fit into, and still I got all those adjectives associated with me. I do realize that my passport and skin-colour gives me certain privileges, but it does not mean that I have been able to take much advantage of it. This is something I could have discussed in the paper, also I see now that I could have included more facts concerning the Mexican-American border. The new Jim Crow in The colour of Justice by Michelle Alexander would have been relevant in discussing the immigration laws, and how they affect the American side of the border. It could also have been a good idea to provide some facts about the Norwegian-Russian border as well, to shed some light on how this border community works, and about the tension between the Norwegian- and Russian government.

When reading about writers that "champion writing in their own tongue", but they write in English, you feel kind of inspired, but also that it is contradictory. Still, I would not have been able to read most of the text on our syllabus if they were not written in English. English as a lingua franca; a bridge not only between languages, but also our cultures and world views, and it affects how we across the sea understand the border, but the question is then; whose side of the border is it we are seeing? In Translating translation, Alberto Rios(1999) writes that the subject is not you and I, it is really I and I. Two individuals. Even if there is a general consensus on how to look at the subject of borders, there will never be just one border.

"The actual physical borderland that I'm dealing with . . . 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" (Anzaldúa 1999, preface).

In language acquisition with focus on first and second language learning, we learnt that studying another language opens up for understanding of that culture in a way that you cannot if you are monolingual. This is because you have to learn about the culture the language belongs to in order to understand how the languages work, and the cultural references the language consists of. Writing in a semi-academic tone, gives room for artistic liberties, but it still feels strange to use the words "we", and "them". I also feel that I should have written in Norwegian, because most of the readers of riss are Norwegians, and most of the texts in the magazine are in Norwegian. But most of all because, English is not my language all the time, just as Norwegian is not always the language I prefer to express myself.

*Spoiler* The essay was rejected. Although I did get a few tips on how to improve the essay:

1. Comment more on the quoted passages and 2. Stay formal (don't deviate from the academic language) and 3. a more clear introduction. These are reasonable suggestions. 

The good news is: I got a B on this exam.