Reading: Gloria Anzaldúa, “To(o) Queer the Writer”

Reading assignment for Friday, March 23, 2012. Gloria Anzaldúa, “To(o) Queer the Writer– Loca, escritora y chicana (from Living Chicana Theory) Your reply (under Comments) is due before class. Remember, you don’t need to answer all or even any of the questions, but your response should demonstrate you’ve done and thought about the readings. Be sure to check and make sure your response posts. Note: Be sure to read the endnotes for this text!

How does Anzaldúa trouble the identifier / label “lesbian” as it might be applied to herself? What does she want to be identified as instead? How does she problematize queerness?

What do you think it means to “police the queer person of color with theory”? How would that fit in with the other readings you have done this semester? How does it connect with her later passage on the idea of policing with fear?

Translate a passage of Spanish used in the text and discuss why she may have used Spanish for that sentence.

Discuss Anzaldúa’s writing about reading as a male versus. female. How does it relate to issues of identity formation?

How does this text make you feel? Is Anzaldúa creating an open atmosphere or an anxious one? Or something else? How would you compare it to Borderlands or This Bridge Called My Back? Would it fit in with either? Both?

10 thoughts on “Reading: Gloria Anzaldúa, “To(o) Queer the Writer””

  1. This section caught my attention because it hadn’t crossed my mind that women do “read as men and women write as me,” however, men don’t do the same. Anzaldúa says women are taught to read men’s books like westerns, spy novels, and mysteries, in addition to typical soap operas and romance novels. You hardly ever see a man read women’s literature because it’s not “serious.” But why is that? What are the criteria of serious literature? Since we live a male dominant society I believe men don’t read women because it might demasculate them and they themselves might be seen as queer or gay. Anzaldúa mentions that “reading is one way of constructing identity.” I believe this is true because we identify with readings that are familiar to us, but also we are curious to read things that are different and when we do we point out the things that are dissimilar to us. For example, lesbian writers have a hard time getting their point across to straight readers because the readers only focus on what they think they know about lesbians. The straight readers focus more on the sex instead of the “full complexity” of their lives.

  2. I can relate to Gloria when she talks about the difference of expectations that readers or writers have for each other when she wrote, ” She looks at a piece of writing and reads it differently (273)”. I can relate to this because I have to deal with the same type of expectation in the class. I am expected by the teacher the interpret the reading the way a Chicana major does, but my education and ethnic background cause me to interpret the readings a different way. I thought Gloria explained our differences in interpretation perfectly when she said, ” One always writes and reads from the place one’s feet are planted…, ones particular position, point of view(273).” The same way that someone can’t assume that all women who are Chicana write or interpret readings the same way, is the same way people with different backgrounds can’t be expected to write or interpret readings the same way because they share a common thread. A Chicana women won’t write the same as Gloria because they are both Chicana women. One might be from upper class America, while the other can be from lower class America. One person can be straight ,while the other person isn’t. I don’t think it is ever right to tell someone how they are supposed to interpret or write something, if you are going based off of how you expect them to interpret or read writings

  3. It’s interesting to see in Gloria Anzaldúa’s work how she discusses the evolving language in the LGBT community. It shows how each word like “homosexual,” “lesbian,” etc., reflect a historical, political, and social movement revolving around each one. I was drawn to how she reflects upon each one because I am currently reading a book called Transgender History by Susan Stryker who is a Transsexual woman which raises the question that Anzaldúa’s question what makes a Queer writer and the work authentic. In Stryker’s book, there’s a section that traces how the terms were utilized throughout history and by what institutions of power. However unlike Anzaldúa, Stryker chooses to use transgender as the umbrella term because she defines it as “the movement across a socially imposed boundary away from an unchosen starting place” which are people who cross over the boundaries. (Stryker 1). On the other hand, Anzaldúa identifies with “queer” but she mentions has been used by “white middle-class lesbian theorists” a derogatory term for homosexuality (Anzaldúa 264). I like that I can compare both authors because it shows that their experiences are different because of many factors and not just their gay identity. Furthermore, Anzaldúa describes lesbian and homosexual as iron cast mold which implies that they are very restrictive categories because they evoke molds that derive from the “Euro-Anglo American mold and homosexual from a deviant” one because the latter has been used by the medical field to declare people sick in order, to “fix” them. Thus, you can see why Anzaldúa resists labeling herself because historically and politically these terms have been used to oppress and marginalize groups (266). Although in the past years, members of the gay community have been working on reclaiming back the terms and transforming them into forms of empowerment. They are attempting to remove the stigma because power lies in language and discourse.

  4. To me in this article, Anzaldúa seems to share/ write similar ideas that can be found within her book, Borderlands/La Fronterea. To me both texts seem to deal with forging one’s identity and not letting others forge one for you. It made me rethink about how to label myself. The text also reminds me of A Bridge Called My Back, dealing with how “Chicana/o, lesbian, queer, etc.” someone is. I really like her personal view on labeling. I like how she uses labeling not sort out and separate but instead uses labeling as a way of keeping record. She uses labeling as a way to keep what makes up her alive and never erased. I especially like the use of the imagery of a river to compare one’s identity.

  5. Anzaldua recognizes that there are many different words used for a queer. Amongst these is the word lesbian, but even though it may be a synonym for the word, Anzaldua has a problem with being “labeled” as such. I think this is important because while these words may all be synonyms and translations of the word, she thinks that the word lesbian brings about a different definition, thus defining her as a predominantly white, middle-class lady, representing an English-only dominant culture. In other words, the term lesbian identifies someone that she does not believe she can associate to. I think it is interesting that she says that she best relates to the word patlache because this is in Nahuatl. It is not even a Spanish word that she identifies herself with but one from an indigenous language. She says she feels more comfortable with these words because she has actually heard them around in her community and I think that brings up a very important point, the fact that we feel comfortable and easily relatable to what comes from our social environment. It is very interesting that although these words can be used interchangeably by many, their deeper definition distinguishes each one as a completely different term. Those in Spanish like marimacha are directly associated with a Latina, whereas the word lesbian as she points out is more directly associated with the white middle- class. Anzaldua identifies her social environment as one that is amalgama de lenguas y culturas, which means a mixture of languages and cultures. This explains why she relates to the word Patlache, because this shows her mixture in identity, just as she is not only a lesbian, a writer or a Chicana but a mixture of the three. As she says here, to identify herself as just one of these would give them very distinguishable definitions, when in reality they are all one and the same because they all identity some jist of her.

  6. One of the first things that I noticed about Anzalduas writing was that she did things differently for herself and fro her own reasons. Not only is it hard to fit in to certain lifestyle as a lesbian she highlighted these facts about herself in order to keep that part of herself from disappearing which some people might not do. However she doesn’t focus only on these aspects as she would be criticized sometimes about not writing of lesbians and sexuality. One problem with having a title, such as lesbian, before “writer” leaves the author with only a little space to explore and write about. Another interesting aspect is that Anzaldua recognizes that white middle class lesbians and gay men are the ones to frame the terms of the debate. However the theories that are formulated in these writings often limit the way people think of themselves as being queer. Think it makes a lot of sense when Anzaldua says that because of this people of color tend to fall into the trap of reactive writing, as to correct the theories that are presented, thus colored people always trying to counter theories given by the dominant. She also gives a good example of how people are composed of many things that are consistently changing within their own environment very similar to that of a river.

  7. Reading Anzaldua reminded me of “Borderlands/ La Frontera” because her voice seems very similar in both; I think it’s because she speaks through experience. Her audience here is those who continue to suppress Chicana lesbians and who are constantly asking her to choose between the various hats she wears. I was able to connect this to what we discussed in Dr. Davalos’ class yesterday that no woman in this planet has had a universal experience that can exactly be shared by everyone. She criticizes the labels that are meant to place everyone under one umbrella term, kind of like “Latina” and “hispanic(s).” She says, “I want to be able to choose what to name myself” meaning that she does not need anyone to define her by a term because she can do that herself through authenticity (Anzaldua, 263). She belongs to herself and only she has the authority to do so.

  8. Much of Anzaldua’s discussion is on the label and language itself of the term “lesbian.” She goes through several examples that place the phrases in a negative tone– and that it can be used as such by anyone. She states that she’d rather have the option to choose from the options offered, and as a result, she chooses “dyke” or ”queer.”
    She also explains the fact that to be a lesbian means something different in the world of writing. Although she supports the queer community and understands that not much is out there screaming for support of same sex relationships, writing about the subjects puts her in a category that she finds constraining. She believes its constraining in a cultural way, especially because she believes that she is more than just a lesbian woman. She is afraid that the marginalization of a specific category will erase identities, such as Chicana, from herself.
    An example of her belief in her Chicano self is shown when she describes her writing. She says that she sees her poems, stories, and essays as autohistorias, her Spanish label meaning autobiographical writings. In the language that is part of her, she already has a label for her works, thus further demonstrating that Spanish is a part of her just as much as the lesbian self that others expect her to proclaim.

  9. Because Anzaldua’s writing focuses so frequently on the occupation of in-between spaces, she has a clear discomfort with being asked to occupy one space entirely that does not represent her as a whole. The vision of the hegemonic female is white and upper-middle class. Even when one hears the term “lesbian”, one most often thinks in these hegemonic terms of white and upper-middle class. To be other than those identifiers, then, is to not be a “lesbian”. Because images of colored women are not among the images that come to mind, it can be very uncomfortable to claim you describe yourself with that word. That word is describing, at least by social construction, something that is not you. For many white lesbians, “lesbian” is the only way that they are othered, and so it is easier to define themselves this way. For queer women of color, who are othered in so many ways, calling yourself a lesbian seems to deny or gloss over your other “others”. Ideally, I think, Anzaldua would exist best in a world without such strong meaning attached to labels. She would like to weave through everything, occupying a unique perspective, but also multiple perspectives. When one label threatens to choke out all of your other labels, it starts to seem like labeling is the antithesis of that unique perspective.

  10. This reading by Gloria Anzaldua caught my interest within the first sentence. She states “there are no lesbian writers,” I in a way disagree. I feel that just because individuals aren’t out displaying their personal choice of relationship doesn’t mean there aren’t lesbian writers. I also liked how she displayed the origin of the term lesbian and how she being one likes one word against another and how she wants to be treated as an equal just as any other straight women would. She identifies with lesbianism being a race that is ignored and discriminated against and in a way they are back then it was not acceptable to be a lesbian but in this time in day society is more accepting. I also agree with Anzaldua when she states that even though the women might be of the same sex they are not the same individual and how everyone’s culture creates a new perspective and I believe this to be true because everyone has their own personality and their own characteristics that make them different from everyone else. Overall I really enjoyed reading this article.

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