Nepantla - In-betweenness and Gloria Anzaldúa

By Nadia Plamadeala

Many people who have lived far from home for a few years know the feeling of not fully belonging. You don’t fit into the new culture, but you are not part of your home culture either. Not anymore. You are somewhere in the middle. It might sound fun at a language exchange and lonely during holidays. It may seem like you are in the middle of a process that has to end by integrating into the new culture(s) or by lingering into your home culture forever. Well, there’s another way for those like us: to embrace in-betweenness as part of our identity. 

I didn’t learn anything about people I could identify with until I was 20 years old. Being raised in a former Soviet country, we did learn about many brave men and a vast country that didn’t exist anymore. We learned almost nothing about our reality or about the women who preceded us.

This is why I was so surprised to feel belonging later in life, in Rome, in an Italian university, studying a Chicana writer, Gloria Anzaldúa. Her mixing English and Spanish was the kind of language that made me feel at home, her words were my words.

I felt finally seen by an academic environment for the first time in my life, thanks to a woman who lived thousands of miles away. Wasn’t that surprising?

My country, Moldova, was divided between East and West, Russian and Romanian. Our way of speaking was perceived as inferior by both Russians and Romanians. We borrowed words from both languages to create a strange looked down upon mix. The border changed so many times, no one expected stability anymore.

Gloria Anzaldúa and the Nepantla consciousness

The writing of Gloria Anzaldúa, from “Borderlands/La Frontera” to “This Bridge Called My Back” finally convinced me I wasn’t less for not fully belonging to any culture. I existed, thus I had the right to speak.

With her writing, she created a safe space for those like me, people who didn’t have a single language, a national legacy, or a clear and unique identity.

We were Nepantla - a Nahuatl word that means “in-between”, a word Anzaldúa used to describe the mixed cultural identity, “the new mestiza”.

How did it start? After the Mexican-American war in 1848, some Northern Mexican territories became part of the United States. People living there, Chicanos, became a cultural and linguistic minority overnight. Years after, their language became hybrid. Unrecognized by Spanish speakers from Mexico nor from English speakers from the United States. People living near the border were perceived as subalterns.

Gloria Anzaldúa, “a poor Chicanita from the sticks” managed to change all that with the force of her pen. As she said, “I write because I'm scared of writing, but I'm more scared of not writing.”

She mixes languages freely and fluidly, not always providing translation. It locks out those who don’t speak both languages and creates bewilderment in those who do. In 1992 at a conference in Cincinnati, Anzaldúa read her poem in Spanish without providing translation. Later she explained: “I know that was frustrating for many of you, but I wanted you to see what it feels like to be locked out of the language”.

In “How to Tame a Wild Tongue,” Anzaldúa said that back in the Sixties at the university all Chicano students were required to take two speech classes. Their purpose: to get rid of their accents. She didn’t comply, maintaining her queer mestiza identity in her sexual orientation and in her linguistic and cultural identity, which kept being a mix, the language of the soul.

In-betweenness as a source of inspiration

Anzaldúa’s work challenges binary thinking and unique identity by emphasizing the marginal, mixed cultures that develop along borders. Speaking with an accent and taking your space is an act of empowerment, it helps you to accept your identity.

Anzaldúa created a “sea of words” providing many new metaphors for those who felt they didn’t belong into the old ones. She wrote for “mujeres de color, companions in writing” showing the path to other women who didn’t feel represented by the mainstream culture, setting them free to write about their experience in a language that represented them.

Because by writing freely we create a discourse that includes us. Personal is still political.

This Chicana writer joins the post-colonial debate about language by transposing the language of intimacy in writing, by forcing it into an academic context, by refusing to feel ashamed for who she was, even when she was the only poor, lesbian, Latina woman in the room. And if she could do it, so can you. Maybe not today, but you will get there.

The motivational impact of these political acts was disruptive. Generations of writers felt empowered to write in their languages: Spanish, Spanglish, Tex-Mex identities felt entitled to occupy the classrooms and the panels as they were, without having to assimilate into the dominant culture or erasing parts of their identity.

And then there was me, a girl from a small country from Eastern Europe who discovered my voice and my experience matter as well because Gloria Anzaldúa showed me the way. Feeling seen for the first time changed my life. That’s how important representation is.

Are you a Nepantla?

When you feel like you don’t belong, remember that there’s a tribe of people who live near the borderlands, real or symbolic, those who fit into many realities and cultures. This is our land, this is our affiliation.

If you feel like a Nepantla and in-betweenness and lack of roots is your reality, Gloria is there for you. As Anzaldúa said, “Wild tongues can’t be tamed, they can only be cut out.”

Your voice matters and it has to be expressed. You matter even when you don’t feel like you belong. Remember it especially when someone tries to convince you of the opposite.