Christian Persaud
Borderlands and Fast Speaking Woman
Response:

Maria Sabina was one of the first well-known curandera, also known as a native shaman. A practice typically found in northern Asia and North America, shamans can manipulate or have access to the good and bad sides of the spiritual world. Sabina became popular because she allowed Westerners to participate in the process known as velada, where they would use the psilocybin mushroom or drug, to open up their minds. The velada is seen as a purification and as a communion with the sacred. Upon first inspection, I notice some parallels between the ritual and spiritual methods found in Waldman's Fast Speaking Woman within Iorio's Outside the Bones. Furthermore, all three stories seemed to share a similar writing and perspective style as well where readers know exactly what's on the storyteller's mind, leaving nothing to the imagination. Even more so with Borderlands and Outside the Bones, the heavy use of metaphors leaves a strong impression in my own mind after reading each paragraph. 
 In Waldman's Fast Speaking Woman, this quote stood out to me: 
"I was neither a shaman nor a psychic healer. No special pleading here. I made no claims beyond those of word/cultural worker. I was a 'product' to some extent of my generation, the culture...I was a timeless seeker in my own imagination's interstices, passionately in love with the magics of the phenomenal world" (177).   
Anne Waldman was fascinated with the strange world of spiritual practices. She came in extremely skeptical as a woman who comes from an entirely different background but was so passionate in it that she thought magic was a new-found love of hers. As a cultural worker, Waldman wished to expose those unaware of these long-lost traditions and practices to the western world.  
In Borderlands by Gloria Anzaldua, the "Shamanic State" section caught my attention. The first paragraph where she depicts the stages of her creative process showed me that it was no different from a meditative or trance-like state: "When I create stories in my head, that is, allow the voice and scenes to be projected in the inner screen of my mind, I 'trance'. I used to think I was going crazy or that I was having hallucinations."
This quote is exactly the same as when Waldman talked about the practices of Sabina's shamanism and the effects it had on the mind of its participants. I found this fascinating because I believe great storytellers come from those who are immersed in their vision and can almost live in their stories.