Reading Response 10/06

The Fast Speaking Woman by, Anne Waldman, to me presented itself on page 176 with the help of the professor’s annotations. The line, “To see beyond false boundaries,” is what summed up the piece for me as a whole. Anything after the word “I,” the way Waldman used it, defines a person, but as we can see through her poetry that this is not the case. This then breaks done the false boundaries that we as people put up for ourselves when we describe who we are, or how we define what others are.

Also in Fast Speaking Woman, there was another line that stood out. I thought it was interesting because it reminded me of how opposites are really important to one another. Waldman writes, “Death is the magnificent teacher that wakes you up.” This reminded me of stories people seeing their lives flash before their eyes or going over major life decisions, but only happening when death is near. When I put the image of people with limited amounts of time with the quote I could see how they both coincide. People only become concerned with their lives when it’s on the line. The thought of death is what keeps life alive.

Gloria Anzaldua from, Borderlands/La Frontera; The New Mestiza, had several thought provoking lines for me as well, such as, “A mask may only have the power of presence during a ritual dance and the rest of the time it may merely be a ‘thing’.” The quote made me think about all those “things,” that I have or will have been oblivious to, because I’ve yet to experience the potential out of rest. It expands the human experience because it shows how much different things mean to different people.

The other line from the Anzaldua piece was, “It is dedicated to the validation of humans; that is, it makes people hopeful, happy, secure, and it can have negative effects as well, which propel one towards a search for validation.“ I interpreted it as; something that was created for a positive experience can be turned into a negative experience, depending on who is experiencing the creation.