Entremundos/Amongworlds ENTREMUNDOS/AMONGWORLDS
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EntreMundos/AmongWorlds ENTREMUNDOS/AMONGWORLDS New Perspectives on Gloria E. Anzaldúa Edited By AnaLouise Keating ENTREMUNDOS/AMONGWORLDS © AnaLouise Keating, 2005. Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2005 978-1-4039-6721-3 All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. First published in 2005 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN™ 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010 and Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire, England RG21 6XS Companies and representatives throughout the world. PALGRAVE MACMILLAN is the global academic imprint of the Palgrave Macmillan division of St. Martin’s Press, LLC and of Palgrave Macmillan Ltd. Macmillan® is a registered trademark in the United States, United Kingdom and other countries. Palgrave is a registered trademark in the European Union and other countries. ISBN 978-0-230-60593-0 ISBN 978-1-4039-7713-7 (eBook) DOI 10.1057/9781403977137 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available from Library of Congress A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Design by Newgen Imaging Systems (P) Ltd., Chennai, India. First edition: November 2005 10987654321 para Gloria, Hilda, y todas almas afines Contents Agradecimientos/Acknowledgments x Foreword xiii Introduction shifting worlds, una entrada 1 AnaLouise Keating Part 1 autohistoria y autohistoria-teoría.... (re)writing self, (re)writing culture 1 Gloria y yo: Writing silence and the search for the fronteriza voice 15 Zulma Y. Méndez 2 The 1,001-Piece Nights of Gloria Anzaldúa: Autohistoria-teoría at Florida Atlantic University 17 Caren S. Neile 3 Reclaiming Pleasure: Reading the Body in “People Should Not Die in June in South Texas” 29 Mary Loving Blanchard 4 Daughter of Coatlicue: An Interview with Gloria Anzaldúa 41 Irene Lara 5 Living in the House of Nepantla 57 Irene Reti Part 2 nepantla....pathways to change 6 La Gloriosa Travesura de la Musa Que Cruza/The Misbehaving Glory(a) of the Border-Crossing Muse: Transgression in Anzaldúa’s Children’s Stories 63 Edith M. Vásquez viii Contents 7 Apertures of In-Betweeness, of Selves in the Middle 77 Mariana Ortega 8 From within Germinative Stasis: Creating Active Subjectivity, Resistant Agency 85 María Lugones 9 Negotiating Paradoxical Spaces: Women, Disabilities, and the Experience of Nepantla 101 Carrie McMaster Part 3 nos/otras....intersecting selves/ intersecting others 10 What Do You Learn from What You See? Gloria Anzaldúa and Double-Vision in the Teaching of Writing 109 Eve Wiederhold 11 Reading National Identities: The Radical Disruptions of Borderlands/La Frontera 121 Beth Berila 12 Teaching la Conciencia de la Mestiza in the Midst of White Privilege 129 Simona J. Hill 13 “Know Me Unbroken”: Peeling Back the Silenced Rind of the Queer Mouth 139 Mark W. Bundy 14 New Pathways toward Understanding Self-in-Relation: Anzaldúan (Re)Visions for Developmental Psychology 147 Kelli Zaytoun Part 4 conocimientos.... expanding the vision 15 “So Much Meat”: Gloria Anzaldúa, the Mind/Body Split, and Exerting Control over My Fat Body 163 Elena Levy-Navarro 16 Champion of the Spirit: Anzaldúa’s Critique of Rationalist Epistemology 171 Amala Levine Contents ix 17 Shifting the Shapes of Things to Come: The Presence of the Future in the Philosophy of Gloria Anzaldúa 185 Jane Caputi 18 “Doing Mestizaje”: When Epistemology Becomes Ethics 195 Monica Torres Part 5 el mundo zurdo, the new tribalism.... forging new alliances 19 This Is Personal: Revisiting Gloria Anzaldúa from within the Borderlands 207 Lee Maracle 20 Spirit, Culture, Sex: Elements of the Creative Process in Anzaldúa’s Poetry 213 Linda Garber 21 Radical Rhetoric: Anger, Activism, and Change 227 Amanda Espinosa-Aguilar 22 Tierra Tremenda: The Earth’s Agony and Ecstasy in the Work of Gloria Anzaldúa 233 Inés Hernández-Ávila 23 Shifting Perspectives: Spiritual Activism, Social Transformation, and the Politics of Spirit 241 AnaLouise Keating References 255 List of Contributors 265 Index 271 Agradecimientos/Acknowledgments I am blessed to be surrounded by so many wonderful people y espiritús. Thank you, contributors, for your encouragement, your excitement about this project, your patience, your willingness to revise, and your carefully crafted words. Thank you to my friends/colleagues/familia: Nadine Barrett, Renae Bredin, Tom and JoAnn Keating, Chester and Priscilla Lynton, Carrie McMaster, Deborah Miranda, Sonia Saldívar-Hull, Patricia Stukes, Jane Keating-Vraspier, Doreen Watson, Kelli Zaytoun...Thank you for your encouraging phone calls, e-mails, and conversations, for your wisdom and advice, for your many other forms of assistance as well. Thank you, Claire Sahlin, for being such a thoughtful, supportive, generous colleague (every- one working in university settings should be so lucky!). Thanks to Glenda Lehrmann and the other FIRST librarians at TWU for assistance with research. Thanks to Dru Merriman for help with copying. Thank you, TWU estudientes in my 2003 and 2004 seminar course, Gloria Anzaldúa: Theorizing & the Politics of Imagination, for your feedback and your excite- ment about Gloria’s theories. Thank you, Hilda Anzaldúa, Kit Quan, y Irene Reti, for doing so very much to preserve Gloria’s words. Thank you, Liliana Wilson Grez for allowing us to use your artwork for the cover, and for being so flexible about the format. Gracias to the following writers, who inspire and challenge me: Paula Gunn Allen, M. Jacqui Alexander, James Baldwin, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Leela Fernandes, Joy Harjo, June Jordan, Audre Lorde, Thich Nhat Hanh, Timothy Powell, Jane Roberts, Chela Sandoval. Thanks to everyone at Palgrave MacMillan, especially Gabriella Pearce, Erin Ivy, and Lynn Vande Stouwe. Thanks to Maran Elancheran for your sharp copy-editing eye. Thanks to mi esposo, Eddy Lynton, for your advice, wisdom, encouragement, inspiration, humor, patience, y más. Gracias to our daughter, Jamitrice, for your questions, comments, and confidence. I thank you both for understanding/accepting/tolerating my workaholic tendencies; I am blessed to have you both in my life. And of course I thank Gloria, my dear writing comadre, mentor, and friend. Comadre: gracias por todo, for encouraging me to take on this proj- ect (even before this bridge was finished and you told me I must be as crazy Agradecimientos/Acknowledgments xi as you), for opening your house to me during the years I worked on this book and others, for the meals and walks on West Cliff, for all the conver- sations we shared, for suggesting possible contributors and Liliana’s cover art, for insightful comments on the book proposal, table of contents, and contributors’ drafts, and—most especially—for your shaman aesthetics, your risk-taking inspiration, your bold vision, and your encouragement over the years. Orishas y espiritus, thank you for guiding me, whispering words of encouragement that nourish body/heart/mind/spirit and inspire vision. Foreword Unfinished Words: The Crossing of Gloria Anzaldúa Chela Sandoval There is a kind of emptying out here—a hollowing, and a holying. Gloria Anzaldúa was a prolific writer, yet most of her writings remain unpublished, “unpolished, still,” she would say. Gloria earned her living by teaching, and she was a consummate teacher. In that way, as much as through her writings, Anzaldúa’s ideas traveled globally.1 This book, EntreMundos, was the last book Gloria and I discussed before she died. EntreMundos is “another way to name the borderlands,” she thought aloud, another word for that “alter-space.” It is possible to locate such alter-spaces, these borderlands, geographically, materially, yes. But that space entremun- dos, between worlds, Anzaldúa insisted, also exists in consciousness and cul- ture, in all economies of power. The term “entremundos” situates in language this place that can be experienced and described even though its nature is change—constituted always in-relation-to. For Anzaldúa, entremundos is a science fiction world-of-possibility born of privilege, oppression, hope, and horror. Horror and evil always result from the inequities of oppression, Gloria says, but so too do hope and goodness. In Anzaldúa’s hands the methodology of the oppressed transformed into a promise, a way to imple- ment a global methodology of emancipation. Anzaldúa was a resolute theorist of hope. This book, EntreMundos/AmongWorlds, constitutes a communion-table on which the authors lay out the altering work of Gloria Anzaldúa’s contri- butions. No other collection marks or honors her transition similarly, for this book was conceived with Anzaldúa’s blessing and before her death. In this first book-publication since her transition, we whom she called “nos/otras” are translating and extending the meanings and senses of her work. And Anzaldúa loved, admired, and encouraged the senses that are xiv Chela Sandoval made here—and that will be made—by authors such as María Lugones, Irene Reti, Jane Caputi, and AnaLouise Keating. This book, she told me in 2002, will “redraw my work,” will advance, explain, and go beyond it. She asserts that “it thrills me and...validates me as a writer that people can take my images or ideas and work them out in their own way and write their own theories” (qtd. in Reuman 5).2 And indeed, EntreMundos’ chapters are comprised of scholarship that has traveled in relation to, alongside of, through, and beyond Anzaldúa’s work, just as she had wished. The five sections of