To Live in the Borderlands Means Us

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To conclude her work To Live in the Borderlands Means You, Gloria Anzaldua insists “To survive in the Borderlands you must live sin fronteras, be a crossroads” (119). After many stanzas of explaining what life is like as a mixed race individual in a land of different cultures, Anzaldua uses the conclusion to sum up what she has learned through it all. The Borderlands sounds like a place of diversity near a border where different groups of people live together almost completely separate from one another; essentially co-existing. From what she had to say, it sounds like animosity and prejudice are prevalent and belonging is purely based on culture and race, only allowing acceptance by one group or another. What I gathered is that all people in the borderlands act the same, with their ideals on belonging and acceptance, however Anzaldua is challenging these people to change because she believes that being a crossroads is the best way to live. When I first read the poem, with no back story or knowledge about the work or the author, I was extremely inspired by it. To me the Borderlands is not exactly a place of mixed race people with internal struggles regarding their makeup, but any place of diversity, where people of different cultures live together either in harmony or strife. I still believe that this is part of what Anzaldua wanted to get across in her conclusion, challenging people that live in diversity to take down their guards and live together as one, ignoring cultural differences. As a white boy that was born and raised on the streets of an urban area of a big city, constantly encountering people different from me, people from other cultures with foreign values, I connected a lot with the idea of being a crossroads. As I live life and see people that live ignorantly, avoiding people different from themselves and letting stereotypes and misconceptions cloud
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