ENGL 3371 - Fall 2002

1. The Homeland, Aztlán / El Otro México

What issues distinguish the border for Anzaldúa and what is the experience of the place, as distinct from the US or Mexico? How do the physical layout of the first pages (23-25), the tone, and the code-switching (shifting between Spanish and English) convey the idea of an herida abierta? What effect does the overlaying history (35000BC to the present) have on the speaker's experience of the border? How do the political pressures on identity, culture, nationality find equivalents in Anzaldúa's language? What difference does the context (it's in a book) make?

2. Movimientos de rebelía y las culturas que traicionan

How do expectations based on gender, ethnicity and related border traditions shape Anzaldúa? Name some of the ways in which she is displaced, does not belong; how does she respond? What is the importance of language in this response? Explain "intimate terrorism". How does Anzaldúa use (and change) traditional, symbolic figures such as Malinali and Coatlalopeuh?

3. Entering into the Serpent

What effect does Anzaldúa hope to achieve in weaving personal stories with politics and history? In what way does she appropriate the idea of the serpent and how does her experience permit this? What significant language activity is behind the relation of Coatlalopeuh and Guadalupe (as Anzaldúa explains it; 51)? How does attending an Anglo school propose certain attitudes towards language, culture, myth, and identity? (58-59)

4. La herencia de Coatlicue / The Coatlicue State

How does the page layout beginning this chapter dramatize an idea of language? What is the Coatlicue state and how is it related to language, gender, and creativity? How does the pyschic struggle described correspond to issues raised by Freud and Lacan? How is the struggle manifest in Anzaldúa's language?

5. How to Tame a Wild Tongue

Reflect on the factual accounts of linguistic oppression that Anzaldúa recounts. How can they be explained? What are the political and psychological consequences (for individuals or cultures)? How do choices about language become charged with personal and political importance for Anzaldúa? What is the effect of ennumerating the dialects (77)? How does the description of Chicano Spanish correspond with changes you have learned about in the history of English? (79) Analyze the description of Chicano language/politics/identity (85).

6. Tlilli, Tlapalli

What non-Western attitudes towards language and writing does Anazaldúa invoke? (91). How does her description of the relation of images to writing accord with what theorists have argued? What role does language play in the drama of self-making; and does this apply to artists exclusively or does Anzaldúa want to extend the point to all? (93) In what ways does Anzaldúa's description of the creative struggle recall Cixous or Kristeva? (96-97) And how does it differ?

7. La conciencia de la mestiza

What role does language play in shaping mestizo experience for Anzaldúa? Consider whether there is a Whorfian dimension to her perceptions. What are the linguistic roots to the "tolerance for ambiguity"? In imagining gender liberation and critiquing masculine values, what role does Anzaldúa assign to language? (105-6)