Gloria Anzaldua's Essay 'La Frontera'
Michael Thompson SXS 667 – Reading Response Paper #3
ID# 909067827 July 3, 2013
In her essay La Frontera, Gloria Anzaldua provides a detailed history of the persecution of the Chicano settlers of the U.S. Southwest at the hands of their Anglo oppressors. Anzaldua refers to the Aztlan, the borderlands between the United States and Mexico encompassing parts of Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, and California, as a “vague and undetermined place created by the emotional residue of an unnatural boundary…the prohibited and forbidden are its inhabitants…the squint-eyed, the perverse, the queer, the troublesome”. I find the author’s utilization of the word queer to describe the Aztlan peoples particularly interesting, as it draws a recognizable parallel between the historical struggles of Chicanos with …show more content…
The author’s characterizations of the oppressive actions of the political-ruling white class towards the Chicano people can just as easily be applied to recent legislation crafted by several right-leaning politicians that serves only to strip LGBTQ individuals of their civil rights and to designate said persons as second class citizens. These statutes include the recently invalidated Proposition 8 here in California as well as the Federal Defense of Marriage Act, which would have forbidden gay couples from enjoying the same marriage benefits as heterosexual spouses, current state laws or constitutional amendments in 35 states that define marriage as being exclusively between a man and a woman, and current anti-sodomy laws aimed squarely at gay couples in 13 states that remain on the books despite such laws being outlawed by the US Supreme Court 10 years ago. Such anti-gay legislation is similar in prejudicial and persecutory scope as recent anti-immigration legislation enacted in Arizona and Alabama that seeks
ID# 909067827 July 3, 2013
In her essay La Frontera, Gloria Anzaldua provides a detailed history of the persecution of the Chicano settlers of the U.S. Southwest at the hands of their Anglo oppressors. Anzaldua refers to the Aztlan, the borderlands between the United States and Mexico encompassing parts of Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, and California, as a “vague and undetermined place created by the emotional residue of an unnatural boundary…the prohibited and forbidden are its inhabitants…the squint-eyed, the perverse, the queer, the troublesome”. I find the author’s utilization of the word queer to describe the Aztlan peoples particularly interesting, as it draws a recognizable parallel between the historical struggles of Chicanos with …show more content…
The author’s characterizations of the oppressive actions of the political-ruling white class towards the Chicano people can just as easily be applied to recent legislation crafted by several right-leaning politicians that serves only to strip LGBTQ individuals of their civil rights and to designate said persons as second class citizens. These statutes include the recently invalidated Proposition 8 here in California as well as the Federal Defense of Marriage Act, which would have forbidden gay couples from enjoying the same marriage benefits as heterosexual spouses, current state laws or constitutional amendments in 35 states that define marriage as being exclusively between a man and a woman, and current anti-sodomy laws aimed squarely at gay couples in 13 states that remain on the books despite such laws being outlawed by the US Supreme Court 10 years ago. Such anti-gay legislation is similar in prejudicial and persecutory scope as recent anti-immigration legislation enacted in Arizona and Alabama that seeks