Date of Award

Spring 5-4-2024

Abstract

Gloria Anzaldúa’s groundbreaking theoretical and creative collection of essays entitled Borderlands / La Frontera: The New Mestiza provides foundational ideas and principles to consider the physical, mental, and emotional struggles of those living along the U.S.-Mexican border. This thesis furthers this discussion by contemplating what happens psychologically to those residing in physical and cognitive borderlands, including but not limited to the U.S.-Mexican border. Specifically, I develop a framework to conceptualize borderlands of the mind, focusing on people-groups who experience multiple kinds of marginalization. I argue that these layers of marginalization negatively impact one’s sense of self, fostering a cognitive divide between societal expectations and personal dispositions. In particular, I concentrate on three sometimes overlapping groups notably affected by cognitive borderlands—women, persons of color, and members of the LGBTQ+ community—as they mediate different versions of their identity in a white-dominated, patriarchal, and heteronormative society. I use ideas presented in Anzaldúa’s Borderlands, double- and triple-consciousness theory, intersectionality, gender studies, queer theory, and identity studies to guide my argument, as well as to analyze three contemporary works by Latin-American women: Ada Limón’s The Carrying, Ashley Hope Pérez’s Out of Darkness, and Carmen Maria Machado’s In the Dream House. In each chapter, I focus on one novel and one cognitive borderland foregrounded in that narrative, woman, race, and LGBTQ+ respectively. Ultimately, I show the ways in which these authors and theorists help to build a new culture—a borderland culture—that serves as a bridge between warring societies, ideologies, and people.

Advisor

Caresse John

Committee Member 1

Andrea Stover Paine

Committee Member 2

Jennifer Buentello

Department

English, Department of

College

Liberal Arts and Social Sciences, College of

Document Type

Thesis

Degree

Master of Arts (MA)

Degree Level

Master's

Degree Grantor

Belmont University

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