Borders

The Great Wall of China

The Berlin Wall

U.S.-Mexico Border Wall 

 I just got done reading this book for my Contemporary American Literature class. It was beautiful. It is called Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza by Gloria Anzaldua. There is no possible way to categorize this book into one specific genre. Linguistically, Anzaldua switches between Spanish and English... sometimes mid-sentence. I don't speak Spanish and so it's been an interesting read for me to have to take an extra step to look up the translations. Beyond the linguistics of the book, the matter of form vs. content make this book impossible to categorize into one genre. This book is fictional, historical, personal narrative, borders on the fantastical, it is poetic, manifesto in nature... and even political treatise. I've never read a more beautiful body of text. Parts of it were difficult to read, I won't lie, and I'm not talking about the Spanish pieces. This entire book explores the concept of borders; specifically racial borders. Beyond that, this book discusses self-created borders that keep us from becoming something beyond what we believe ourselves to be. It explores the borders of gender. A lot of this book explores concepts outside of my comfort range, but I am happy to have read it all the same. It got me thinking of the borders within my own life.

Have you ever been talking to someone you love and somehow what you've said was lost in an emotional translation that you didn't even know was there until after the fact? What you were saying to this person was lost because of what they felt and so they understood something completely "contrary" to what you were saying. I quoted "contrary" because in this sense it isn't a convoluted understanding this person came to, because their reality caused them to understand something underneath what you were trying to say. And you can't fault this person for understanding something completely different because... you weren't clear enough in what you were saying. That's how I felt when I read the Spanish text of this book. The way Anzaldua placed the Spanish text was brilliant. She started off with a sentence here and there, a sentence in Spanish that repeated the previous English sentence. But as the story unraveled... as the history developed, she would "interrupt" English text with entire paragraphs of Spanish text... and she would "interrupt" at a point in the text where, as a reader, you were completely entranced in the story. For someone who does not speak Spanish, like myself, you became confused and panicked to understand what she was saying. And it would take time to find a translation that made any sense at all.

It made me think about arguments and the borders that are built up between those who are arguing. The borders are built up because of a lot of different reasons: fear of being hurt, fear of being ridiculed, because of pride, and even because you are just done hearing what the other person has to say. But what do borders do? You may feel like they are keeping the other person out, but really... they are locking you inside. They are locking you inside of anger and fear. It's made me think of the borders I've put up in my life and how I've justified them. It makes me think of the borders that entire families can build... and the destruction that comes from them. In the book, Anzaldua writes about the US-Mexican Border and the wall that was built there.

She says, "Wind tugging at my sleeve feet sinking into the sand I stand at the edge where earth touches ocean where the two overlap a gentle coming together at other times and places a violent crash... I walk through the hole in the fence to the other side. Under my fingers I feel the gritty wire rusted by 139 years of the salty breath of the sea. Beneath the iron sky Mexican children kick their soccer ball across, run after it, entering the U.S... 1,950 mile-long open wound dividing a pueblo, a culture, running down the length of my body, staking fence rods in my flesh, splits me splits me me raja me raja This is my home this thin edge of barbwire."

The ocean has no border. The soul has no border. You cannot contain the ocean and you cannot contain your soul. You can draw lines on a map and say "this ocean is ours, and that is yours", you can push down your feelings and pretend they aren't there and you can bite your tongue and not stick up for yourself... and you can fight to push someone away and never forgive them or let them forgive you and you can build your false sense of protection... but it will explode eventually. The idea that the ocean can be contained in dotted lines on a map is silly... as is the idea that you can pretend your feelings away.

The borders we create in ourselves become us and the longer they are there, the deeper they become and it changes and becomes unaffected and unchanged and more powerful. As children, we are un-inhibited. The love of a child is endless and eternally forgiving, but it won't always be that way. Sometime between childhood and adulthood, we learn to build borders. We may think we build them to protect ourselves, but with time, our borders become cages and they hurt... they split you, they crush you, and if you let that become you then you close yourself off to a world of possibility. Reclaim yourself. Take ownership of who you are and tear down the borders within. Only then can you exceed anyone's expectations.