The Paradox Of Being Chicano Essay

Most Chicanas would consider themselves Mestiza; a mixture, a representation of both indigenous culture and spanish culture but, at the same time, something completely new. This identity is often a point of pride. It is celebration of a complex history and a reclamation of the mestiza land and body. Over the years, Chicanx activists, theorists, artists, and writers have attempted to understand what a “borderlands” identity could mean. At the start of the movement, Chicano activist Rodolfo “Corky” Gonzáles wrote the famous poem “I am Joaquín” in which he embraces the contradiction inherently present in mestizaje. He writes,
And now! I must choose between the paradox of victory of the spirit, despite physical hunger, or to exist in the grasp of American social neurosis, sterilization of the soul and a full stomach (Gonzáles).
Here, Gonzáles introduces the paradox of being Chicano.
Her concept of mestizaje offers a more nuanced understanding of the world of the borderlands. More specifically, she focuses on the intersection of female and Chicanx and how Chicanas understand their place in the world. In her 1987 book, Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza she calls it “a consciousness of duality” (Anzaldúa 59), one that welcomes ambiguity and contradiction. Anzaldúa is not just looking at the duality of Spanish and Indigenous or American and Mexican like Gonzáles was. She is writing specifically on the “liminal space” of the Chicana identity. To Anzaldúa, someone with “mestiza consciousness” is an individual who is aware of her contradicting identities and uses that awareness to challenge the binary-thinking propagated by western