Gloria E. Anzaldúa QUOTES

1 " Why am I compelled to write?... Because the world I create in the writing compensates for what the real world does not give me. By writing I put order in the world, give it a handle so I can grasp it. I write because life does not appease my appetites and anger... To become more intimate with myself and you. To discover myself, to preserve myself, to make myself, to achieve self-autonomy. To dispell the myths that I am a mad prophet or a poor suffering soul. To convince myself that I am worthy and that what I have to say is not a pile of shit... Finally I write because I'm scared of writing, but I'm more scared of not writing. "

― Gloria E. Anzaldúa

2 " Though we tremble before uncertain futures
may we meet illness, death and adversity with strength
may we dance in the face of our fears.
"

― Gloria E. Anzaldúa

3 " Caminante, no hay puentes, se hace puentes al andar.

(Voyager, there are no bridges, one builds them as one walks.) "

― Gloria E. Anzaldúa

4 " A woman who writes has power, and a woman with power is feared. "

― Gloria E. Anzaldúa

5 " I preferred the world of imagination to the death of sleep "

― Gloria E. Anzaldúa , Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza

6 " I will have my serpent’s tongue - my woman’s voice, my sexual voice, my poet’s voice. I will overcome the tradition of silence. "

― Gloria E. Anzaldúa , Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza

7 " Who is to say that robbing a people of its language is less violent than war? "

― Gloria E. Anzaldúa , Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza

8 " 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. "

― Gloria E. Anzaldúa , Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza

9 " We’re afraid the others will think we’re agringadas because we don’t speak Chicano Spanish. We oppress each other trying to out-Chicano each other, vying to be “real” Chicanas, to speak like Chicanos. There is no one Chicano language just as there is no one Chicano experience. "

― Gloria E. Anzaldúa

10 " Maimed, mad, and sexually different people were believed to possess supernatural powers by primal cultures' magico-religious thinking. For them, abnormality was the price a person had to pay for her or his extraordinary gift. "

― Gloria E. Anzaldúa

11 " I am an act of kneading, of uniting and joining that not only has produced both a creature of darkness and a creature of light, but also a creature that questions the definitions of light and dark and gives them new meanings. "

― Gloria E. Anzaldúa , Interviews/Entrevistas

12 " As a lesbian I have no face, my own people disclaim me; but I am all races because there is the queer of me in all races. "

― Gloria E. Anzaldúa

13 " Like all people, we perceive the version of reality that our culture communicates. Like others having or living in more than one culture, we get multiple, often opposing messages. The coming together of two self-consistent but habitually incomparable frames of reference causes un choque, a cultural collision. "

― Gloria E. Anzaldúa , Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza

14 " Esos movimientos de rebeldia que tenemos en la sangre nosotros los mexicanos surgen como rios desbocanados en mis venas. "

― Gloria E. Anzaldúa , Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza

15 " But there are no safe spaces. 'Home' can be unsafe and dangerous because it bears the likelihood of intimacy and thus thinner boundaries. Staying 'home' and not venturing out from our group comes from woundedness, and stagnates our growth. To bridge means loosening our borders, not closing off to others. Bridging is the work of opening the gate to the stranger, within and without. "

― Gloria E. Anzaldúa , This Bridge We Call Home: Radical Visions for Transformation

16 " The process of falling apart (the Coyolxauhqui process), of being wounded, is a sort of shamanic initiatory dismemberment that gives suffering a spiritual and soulful value. The shaman’s initiatory ordeal includes some type of death or dismemberment during the ecstatic trance journey. Torn apart into basic elements and then reconstructed, the shaman acquires the power of healing and returns to help the community. To be healed we must be dismembered, pulled apart. The healing occurs in disintegration, in the demotion of the ego as the self’s only authority.20 By connecting with our wounding, the imaginal journey makes it worthwhile. Healing images bring back the pieces, heal las rajaduras. As Hillman notes, healing is a deep change of attitude that involves an adjustment and abandonment of “ego-heroics.” It requires that we shift our perspective. La "

― Gloria E. Anzaldúa , Light in the Dark/Luz en lo Oscuro: Rewriting Identity, Spirituality, Reality

17 " I meet you with my heart in my hand. "

― Gloria E. Anzaldúa , This Bridge We Call Home: Radical Visions for Transformation

18 " Deslenguadas. Somos las del español deficiente. We are your linguistic nightmare, your linguistic aberration, your linguistic mestisaje, the subject of your burla. Because we speak with tongues of fire we are culturally crucified. Racially, culturally and linguistically somos huérfanos —we speak an orphan tongue "

― Gloria E. Anzaldúa

19 " Bridges are thresholds to other realities, archetypal, primal symbols of shifting consciousness. They are passageways, conduits, and connectors that connote transitioning, crossing borders, and changing perspectives. Bridges span liminal spaces between worlds, spaces I call nepantla, a Nahuatl word meaning tierra entre medio. "

― Gloria E. Anzaldúa , Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza

20 " I can't seem to stay out of my own way. "

― Gloria E. Anzaldúa

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