Gender on the Borderlands: The Frontiers Reader (review)

Perhaps the most critical and influential study about the U.S.-Mexico borderlands came not from the traditional lines of the humanities or the social sciences, but instead from a groundbreaking book of poetry and autobiographical short essays. Gloria Anzaldúa's Borderlands/La Frontera (1987) inspired a new way of thinking about borders (narrow dividing strips) and borderlands (vague and undetermined places), and continues to inspire feminist, ethnic, cultural, critical, and border studies. Like its predecessor, Gender on the Borderlands is a welcome and needed addition to the wide-ranging literature that it encompasses. Stemming from a 2001 borderlands seminar and conference at St. Mary's University and originally published as a 2003 double issue of Frontiers, the text is as relevant now as it was in 2001 and in 2003. The relevancy of the text speaks to an unfortunate reality that in 2007, 20 years after the publication of Borderlands/La Frontera, we are still faced with the momentous task to, as the Introduction states, "expose, inscribe, oppose, and write/ right the gendered politics of domination on the borderlands, old and new" (p. ix).

Divided into six sections, the text focuses on the gendered and other politics that (re)produce the U.S.-Mexico borderlands. Within each section are oral histories, academic essays, testimonies, art, performance, interviews and activism, each offering levels of analysis ranging from the local to the global, and each negotiating through ostensible official histories of the borderlands. In Part I, the authors present personal accounts that speak to the pain of "claiming" place and self—place in the form of locations divided by physical borderlands and self in the form of identities divided by metaphorical borderlands. While Part I illustrates the notion of borderlands as ambiguous and uncertain, Part II offers a clear "contextualizing" of alternative borderlands histories, which includes a must-read literature review. The authors in Part II each differently address intersectionalities of race/ethnicity, class, gender, and sexualities, yet collectively remind us that these identities are part of a larger process of social constructions. From social constructs to artistic forms, Part III examines the cultural politics of art. Whether it is poetry, performance, or visual, art often (re)presents social critique and cultural reaffirmation of historical and contemporary identities. In the instances offered in Part III, art is a means by which people of the borderlands can, as the section's subtitles describe, "revision, perform, and liberate" the U.S.-Mexico borderlands. Part IV, a spiritual sibling to Parts I and II, seeks to "excavate" the present-day histories that have all too often been made invisible by dominant discourse. In this section, however, the chapters focus specifically on agency and memory on the borderlands, and speak specifically to agency on the borderlands.

The next section, Part V, centers on the unwritten gender and racial politics of the city of San Antonio. With its rich history, come inherent contradictions; and San Antonio offers an interesting case study of domination and colonialism, and of empowerment and decolonization. Particularly interesting are each essay's unraveling of the facade that "living in San Antonio" means living in a multicultural beckon of liberty. As Part V is one of the longest sections of the text, it is also personally the most interesting. Finally, Part VI analyzes the paradox of global capitalism, opening borders for monetary flows and restricting human flows across the same borders. In this section, we see the implications of global domination on local spaces.

While the focus is contemporary, the issues are timeless. Given the complexities of studying both gender and the U.S.-Mexico borderlands, the text vividly illustrates how alternative histories are transforming how we ought to consider studying gender on the borderlands. Gender on the Borderlands offers excellent content for anyone interested in studying feminist, ethnic, cultural, critical, and border studies, and is a much-welcome and very necessary...