'CONCEPT OF BORDERLAND'

"Living on borders and in margins, keeping intact one's shifting and multiple identity and integrity, is like trying to swim in a new element, an ‘alien’ element. There is an exhilaration in being a participant in the further evolution of humankind, in being ‘worked’ on. I have the sense that certain ‘faculties’ – not just in me but in every border resident, colored or non-colored – and dormant areas of consciousness are being activated, awakened. Strange, huh? And yes, the ‘alien’ element has become familiar – never comfortable, not with society's clamour to uphold the old, to rejoin the flock, to go with the herd. No, not comfortable but home."

"Borders are set up to define the places that are safe and unsafe, to distinguish us from them. A border is a dividing line, a narrow strip along a steep edge. A borderland is a vague and undetermined place created by the emotional residue of an unnatural boundary. It is in a constant state of transition. The prohibited and forbidden are its inhabitants."

Gloria Anzaldúa, Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza (San Francisco: Aunt Lute Books, 1987), x and 3.