Ideology and Identity--A Brief Analysis of Anzaldua’s Book Borderlands/ La Frontera: The New Mestiza

Source:
By:Zhouna Shao

DOI: https://doi.org/10.30564/ret.v5i1.4327

Abstract:

This thesis is to explore Anzaldua’s autobiographical book Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza, to discuss how multicultural environment influenced
Gloria, why she considers herself as a border person, a person with multiple identities, to analyze how she struggles in a land where there is uniformity between sexual oppression and racial oppression, refusing to be reduced to the “other”. I will briefly introduce Anzaldua’s early experience as well as her identity as a colored lesbian. Her life is a crossover where gender, racial, sexuality, class problem connect with each other. In the first part, I will discuss about Anzaldua’s idea of taking Ideology as culture tyranny which creates visible and invisible pressure from outside that keeps shaping Chicano’s sense of self, objectifying the colored people. In the second part, I will analyze the oppression that Chicano women suffer from the male dominated white society, and how the ideological oppression shapes their identity. In the third part, I will explore Anzaldua’s radical theory --“new Mestiza consciousness”.

References:

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