In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

For positive social change to occur we must imagine a reality that differs from what already exists. . . . Empowerment comes from ideas— our revolution is fought with concepts, not with guns, and it is fueled by vision. gloria anzaldúa, “(un)natural bridges” I first encountered Gloria Anzaldúa’s work as a graduate student in a literary theory class. After spending most of the semester deciphering writings by such luminaries as Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault, and Homi Bhabha, it was refreshing to finally encounter clear, vibrant prose. My eyes flew with the lines; my fingers could almost touch the thick, fullbodied emotions streaming out of the pages. I kept turning the pages, amazed. Could she write in such an intensely personal, metaphoric way and still be anthologized alongside obscure postmodern philosophers in The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism? I put Borderlands/La Frontera on my reading list. When AnaLouise Keating at Texas Woman’s University offered a writing-intensive seminar titled “Gloria Anzaldúa: Theorizing and the Politics of Imagination,” I signed up early. In that class we read all of Anzaldúa’s published work and were introduced to her promising post-Borderlands theories. After Anzaldúa’s death, I found myself often going back to her writings to seek comfort, inspiration , or the simple enjoyment of reading her words. I found myself dwelling upon her nos/otras concept and wondering how it could help people such as myself to overcome a social phenomenon I term the postcolonial inferiority complex,1 the sense of inferiority suffered by many inhabitants of developing countries in the postcolonial era and brought on by western political, economic, and cultural domination. Suffering from this inferiority complex, people internalize white supremacist ideologies and accept a hierarchical value system based on violent dualisms that CHAPTER 11 Breaking Our Chains: Achieving Nos/otras Consciousness lei zhang 86 Exposing the Wounds prize “whiteness” over color. Anzaldúa’s nos/otras theory can transform and eventually eradicate dualisms such as these. Anzaldúa took the pronoun “nosotras,” Spanish for the feminine “we” or “us,” and inserted a slash to signify “we/others.” The slash represents a bridge that connects “us” to “others” (“now let us shift” 570). Thus, the term “nos/otras” reflects a connectionist vision of bridging cultural divides and represents a fundamental desire to transcend binaries that have pitted people against one another. By connecting “us” with “others,” nos/otras enables us to search for “an unmapped common ground” (“now let us shift” 570) and offers an alternative to the dominant dualistic worldviews. Furthermore, the nos/otras concept teaches us to accept the other as an equal partner and focus on the spiritual connection among us, finding “the best instead of the worst in the other,” thinking of “la otra in a compassionate way” (“now let us shift” 572). Thus the nos/otras concept represents a postmodern effort to transcend binary oppositions and imagines a future “when the bridge will no longer be needed—we’ll have shifted to a seamless nosotras” (“now let us shift” 570). These discussions have inspired me to use the nos/otras concept as a grand vision, a blueprint to work at transforming the postcolonial inferiority complex into a positive sense of self. For many years I have observed a disturbing trend by which many Chinese, both in China and the United States, have embraced western concepts of beauty. Hollywood movies and American soap operas have brought images of blond, blueeyed stars into almost every Chinese household.2 A recent trip to China vividly reminded me how much my home country has changed. Upon my arrival, my thoughtful sister included, among my bathroom supplies, a bottle of L’Oreal White Perfect Whitening Facial Foam and Doctor Li Whitening Water Masks.3 My fashion-conscious college friend showed up with a head of yellow/blond hair and told me it was the current fashion. When we visited a Japanese department store in Chengdu, the provincial capital in Sichuan province, my husband walked through the clothing sections taking note of photos of Western models and Westernlooking mannequins yet could not find one that looked Chinese or Japanese . Chinese newspapers advertise plastic surgeries to add an extra fold, creating the more esthetically pleasing, occidental “double eyelid.” On the billboards that decorate the city streets, we see digitally doctored, westernized “beauties” with sparkly white skin, big eyes, and “double eyelids.” While practices such as whitening one’s skin, highlighting one’s hair, [18.189...

Share