Towards a New Consciousness by Gloria Anzaldúa

In this writing piece Anzaldúa talks about the issues that occur with being a person of multiple races.  She talks about how she is a mestiza, which I didn’t understand what that meant so I looked it up and it means a woman, especially in Latin America, who has mixed ancestry of European and Native American descent.  Anzaldúa talks about how being mixed race is like having multiple personalities because to be accepted by people of each race, you have to know how to act like you belong.

Sometimes, people aren’t accepted at all because maybe they aren’t white enough or Mexican enough to consider themselves either race.  But, she also says that that doesn’t have to be a bad thing because then multiracial people can just create their own race where they will be completely accepted for who they are, and yet still have a bit of a hand in the other cultures.  So Anzaldúa says that it will ultimately be those people of multiracial descent that could possibly bring all races together and end racism.

Then at one point, she starts talking about the LGBT community in the same way.  She said, “Being the supreme crossers of cultures, homosexuals have strong bonds with the queer white, Black, Asian, Native American, Latina, and with queer in Italy, Australia, and the rest of the planet… Our role is to link people with each other – the Blacks with Jews with Indians with Asians with whites with extraterrestrials.”

I just chose this video because it was interesting to hear about her story and all the issues with being multiracial, even growing up as a child.

Final Thoughts

So I had a little difficulty with this article, especially with Gloria Anzaldúa jumping around from speaking English then throwing in a few Spanish phrases in, but ultimately this is what I got out of the piece.  Please let me know if anyone got something different out of it.