Eyes of the soul

                                                        Eyes of the soul

Gloria Anzaldua writing in Borderlands/ La Frontera: The New Mestiza left me speechless and fascinated.  She addresses to her writing as a human being, with the same anatomy and fleshy desires. Her style of writing is very descriptive, she uses words such as splashing, cold, sweet,rough to give us a sensory image of the scenario.  Personification is found throughout the essay "sore soul",she talks about her writing as being rebellious and having a brain of his own.   Her writing is Coatlicue or la Musa bruja, the spirit  that is within her.  Anzaldua talks about the different views western cultures and tribal cultures hold for works of art. She states that western cultures see art as inanimate objects, something like a trophy that is meant to be displayed in fancy frames, or luxurious galleries to feed the artist ego. Meanwhile for Indian tribes art work is alive, is its own person, it craves what it desires, it has a soul and a deep spiritual meanings. As I was reading the Shaman State section,  I felt a connection between her and the Novel Outside the bones. Not only do Lyn Di Lorio and Gloria Anzaldua write about supernatural topics, Spanish is also incorporated into their writings. She states "But, in reconstruction the traumas behind the images, I make sense of them, and once they have meaning they are changed,transformed. It is then that writing heals me, brings me great joy.  This piece reminded me of the spirits leaving the cauldron in outside the bones.  Anzaldua becomes free through her writings, there's no limitations to her imagination.  She can be anything she wants, a snake, a mountain a mosquito, the wind perhaps. She uses hyperbole to emphasize that "writing is my whole life , it is my obsession". She says" escribo con la tinta de mi sangre" which means I write with the ink of my blood.  Rhyme is used in the text " I give up, let go, let the walls fall" as well as alliteration.
            Fast speaking woman by Anne Waldman was inspired by an introduction to the texts of Maria Sabina. After doing research on Maria Sabina, i found that she used to work with mushrooms that would make you hallucinate, therefore allowing one to become spiritually in touch with supernatural forces. Sabina would call her rituals, a Velada.  Anaphora is used in the text, Walman begins  each line with "because i" at the beginning. also with " I'am the" and " I'am a". She uses words rhyme, " I'm a flesh woman, I'm a flexible woman".  Waldman in one hand is interested in Tantra, which is exactly what Anzaldua was experiencing, where "Death was the magnificence teacher that wakes you up". This explains her insomnia and being able to write during the night time.  For Anzaldua hallucinations was in her nature, however for Waldman she had to eat mushrooms to experience such spiritual experience. She was inspired by Sabina work.   In Sabinas case individuals view her practice as  selling drugs which had an impact on their culture and drained out the meaning of what Shamanism truly represents. Both "Fast Speaking Woman" and "La Frontera" t are narrated from a first person point of view and both address the same topic of supernatural experience, one in a more descriptive and personal way. The other from inexperience.

Fast Speaking Women/ From Borderlands La Frontera

In Fast Speaking Woman, Anne Waldman’s chant is describing various types of women including her and the ways in which they find their real selves.  Self identity is a very empowering word for women, it can be viewed as women’s influence in society. She begins by listing chants naming all the kind of women there is to be. She speaks to “everywoman” as she states in her poem. The use of “I” in her poem does not mean she only speaks about herself but rather that her chants come from past experiences she faces throughout her life which makes her connect even closer to other women.

In Borderlands La Frontera, Gloria Anzaldua begins by describing how her poetry writing all began. She starts off by mentioning her nightly story telling to her little sister Hilda who threatened to tell her mom if she didn’t. “It must have been then that working with images and writing became connected to night” (184). Throughout her writing she focuses on ones identity and how difficult it can be to find it in each one. Something interesting about this poem was the idea that she included her Mexican American roots. She explained how finding herself was hard because she didn’t want to lose her roots and where she came from. This is something many can relate to when coming to a new country and trying to adjust to that place but never lose their self identity, as she speaks of her different life experiences.

Both of these readings focus on women and this idea of self-identity. Waldman and Anzaldua introduced their own past life experiences to create a sence of togetherness with all women. As we live in a world where society impose that women are subordinated to men, these two authors encourage women to self identify each one in order to be acknowledged as what they are worth. Who am I is a question asked by many but difficult to answer.

Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza / Fast Speaking Woman

Gloria Anzaldua’s Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza and Anne Waldman’s Fast Speaking Woman, have some similarities when it comes to the style of writing and the process of writing. 

Gloria Anzaldua starts off by saying that she started to write when she was young and realized that she was particularly good at making up stories for her little sister every night before going to bed, and decided to put those stories on paper. In the excerpt, Anzaldua talks about the process of writing, and how she “hallucinates” or pictures what her story is going to be about before she even starts to write it. I think that this is important for all writers because it gives them a chance to use their imagination. Anzaldua says, “To facilitate the “movies” with soundtracks, I need to be alone, or in a sensory-deprived state. I plug up my ears with wax, put on my black cloth eye-shadow, lie horizontal and unmoving, in a state between sleep and waking, mind and body locked in my fantasy. I am held prisoner. My body is experiencing events.”(187) This trance that the author goes through is called the Shamanic State, and it is her way of writing stories. 

In Fast Speaking Woman, Anne Waldman talks about women and society. I feel like she puts herself in other women’s shoes in order to define herself as well. In the excerpt, Waldman says “ I had in my head that I would do a list-chant naming all the kinds of women there are to be, interweaving personal details with all the energetic adjectives I could conjure up to make the chant speak of/to/for “everywomen.” (174) She writes her story in chant form, and also makes the “I” in her story speak for every woman. Walkman uses these chants and description to sort of empower woman all over the world. 

Nonetheless, both stories illustrate a slightly different approach to writing poetry. Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza and Fast Speaking Woman both demonstrate that in order for both authors to write their stories, they “escape from their own bodies” wether it is with hallucinations or using themselves to speak for others as well. 

The poets Anzaldua and Waldman

The Women Poets

While reading Gloria Anzaldua from Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza and Anne Waldman from Fast Speaking Woman instantly saw a connect. I saw that two women were poets and loved to write. In some pages in the reading their are poems that either mean something to the poet or a poem written by them. To me when I was reading Anzaldua I felt it was more personal almost as if she was speaking to me personally. Anzadula spoke in first person point of view throughout the reading. In Waldman reading she also speaks in first person point of view.  After reading Waldmans reading the  vibe I get is that she wanted to represent women in the best way possible. In Waldman reading, theres a poem on pages 171-173. In this poem it talks about different types of women.  Anzaldua and Waldman from both talks about cultures or images leading to shaman. In Waldman reading, for example  “A voyage triggered durable interest in Meso-American and South American tantra. Tantra literally means continuity in the Tibertan Buddhist sense”(175). Throughout Waldmans reading it  seems like she did a lot of traveling. I think that’s why she talks a lot about different cultures and women. I think traveling give her a lot inspiration as a poet. In Anzadula reading talks about images, for example, “When I create stories in my head, that is, allow the voices 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. But now realize it is my job, my calling, to traffic in images”(187). I remember reading both reading I saw that  Waldman mention Shaman in her reading. For example,“The fierce images, the state of mind one perceive in Olmec, Toltec, Aztec, Maya iconography are not unlike the fierce shamanic deities of Tibertan Buddhism” She speaks about the shaman healer, what I think she means it also has do with of Buddhism culture. I thought after reading both reading was also instantly connect with Shaman. Also I like that Waldman talks about how she started writing and stories from her father to be creative. I think Azaldua and Waldman both wrote poems for different purpose but end up connected in some way shape or form.

Gloria Azaldua

Anne Waldman

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.

Reading Post 10/06

This weeks reading of Fast speaking Women by Anne Waldman was written in 1^st person anaphoric narrative style of writing.  This piece was inspired by a Mazatec woman named Maria Sabina, who introduced psilocybin mushrooms (once used in healing ceremonies) to the Western culture. In this chant Waldman tries to embody ever aspect and type of woman at a time she says had an unprecedented wave of writers and artist who happen to be women.  Waldman writes, “ I’m a day woman, I’m a doll woman, I’m a sun woman, I’m a late afternoon woman”, I believe she is using a paradox of self-beings in an attempt to be uplifting and encouraging.

The second reading by Gloria Anzaldua called Borderlands/La Frontera The New Mestiza, is also written from a 1^st person point of view when she speaks of her Mexican heritage, her poetry and her writing coming from a Shamanic state.  She writes “I used to think I was going crazy or that I was having hallucinations, … writing evokes images from my unconscious.” Meaning writing comes from the imagination, some think you need words to begin to write but without imagination/thoughts poetry is impossible.

Both writers talked about using a hallucination and out of body experiences to create art/poetry Anzaldua (out-of-body experience) being Pre-Western invasion of the sacred practice and Waldman  (through Sabina) being the result of what this invasion has had in Western culture.  Waldman’s introduction to Sabina was through Folkway recording of Sabina chant-like Tantra evoked through the language of the saint children.  Her community later ostracized Sabina for allowing the US to intrude on a sacred ritual usually used to cure the sick or ill but instead was used to get high. The exposure of ethno poetic work of Maria Sabina’s Vida, Waldman says allowed her “to absorb the experience of her works in me, and put myself into her and then let the “text” emerge as a kind of intuitive “re-working.”  What was an enlightening/influence to Waldman was Anzaldua culture.  Anzaldua writes “performance of the shaman, my people, the Indians, did not split the artistic from the functional, the sacred from the secular, art from everyday life… Before the conquest, poets gathered to play music, dance, sing and read poetry in open-air places around Xochicuahuitl…” I believe she is trying to give a look to American culture of what the mushrooms where really used prior to Wesson and the young people with long hair.

Reading Post.

​The question that thses article kept bringing to question is who am I? One's identity is placed in question in each of these stories. But most importantly, these stories identify how these authors create their writings. For example, Gloria Anzaldua began her writing by telling her younger sister suspenseful stories and she realized how those stories were actually good and she decided to start writing. However, Anzaldua points out the difference between the appreciation of art between cultures. She uses the distinction between Tribal cultures and Western Cultures. Western cultures has only the rich individuals appreciating arts where the Tribal cultures "the 'witness' is a participant in the enactment of the work in the ritual, not a member of the privileged classes". On the other hand Anne Waldman classifies the distinction of woman in society. Anne Waldman list all different type of woman in many different societies as she points to the women who are "abandoned, high-styled, high-heel wearers, etc." 

Nonetheless, the similarity of these stories go beyond the self imposed question, who am I, but the style of these writing are similar as well. As they both touch topics on ancient society groups and utilize some words from their languages. For example, Anzaldua focuses on the Aztec group and utilize words like Ni Culcani. Waldman, on the other hand, utilizes words like tantra from the Tibettan Buddhist. On the long run, these authors use their knowledge of their studies in order to develop their writings. 

Overall, these stories were hard to decipher and still confusing to this point, as it requires knowledge of the ancient society groups. Not being able to identify the history nor impact of the Aztec groups, the Mayan, or the Tibettan Buddhist, it is hard to make conclusive arguments with the content of the reading.  

From Fast Speaking Woman by Anne Waldman, she brings into focus her engagement with chant, the spells, the invocations and rituals. Waldman's work is completely nature. She investigates women role to create an energy poetry  about modern womanhood. For instance on page  171-173, she describes a woman that happens to be any woman's thinking; the defined possibilities of what it means to be a woman. The poem is in recognition to Maria Sabina, a shamaness in  Mexico. Waldman's uses internal rhymes and this represent the individual artist and every woman. For instance, she states "I am a shouting woman/I'm a speech woman/ I'm an atmosphere woman/I'm an airtight woman/ I'm a flesh woman/I'm a flexible woman/I'm a high heeled woman/I'm a high style woman/I'm an automobile woman/I'm a mobile woman..." This use of list and tone Waldman's uses explores the connection between words and sounds. The relationship between mental, physical and verbal forms of women.
From Borderlands/La Frontera, The New Mestiza by Gloria Anzaldua. Anzaldua speaks of the borderlands as a place of racial individuals by providing the definition of what it means to constantly exist in a space without a homeland to move forward to or away from. Her prose and poetry are both symbolic. Her analysis of Mestiza is intermingled  with feminism. She explains the misunderstanding of speaking a language that exist in the borderland; a mixture of Spanish and English. On page 190, Anzaldua states that, " To write , to be a writer, I have to trust and believe in myself as a speaker as a voice for the images. I have to believe that I can communicate with images and words and that I can do it well. A lack of belief in my creative self is a lack of belief in my total self and vice versa. I cannot separate my writing from any part of my life. It's all me. Anzaldua really captures what it is like to embrace all the pieces of herself despite societys' limitations. The question of how do we build history, who should tell it and what language reoccurs throughout. The image of women is translated into a new body that claim a new place. Both of these readings focus on women. The fact that women feel oppressed by society's norm, thus, preventing them from reaching their ambitions.

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. 

    In the reading "Fast Speaking Woman", by Anne Waldman, it is written in contemporary poetry and ritual chants. Waldman is defining herself and defining every other woman trying to find herself. Waldman's  reading is very uplifting and empowering for women. Poetry about modern womanhood. It seeks to define the possibilities of what it means to be a woman. Although, this may have been written to reflect a certain period in time.

    In the reading "From Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza", by Gloria Anzaldua, it is an autobiography and prose. Each of the essays and poems draws on the authors life experiences. A search for identity in a world that refuses to allow one. Anzaldua, grew up in a world of confusion and oppression.

    Both of these readings focus on women and self identity. Many women are facing an intense internal struggle to find their identity, and that this struggle is an effect of what they experience as enormous pressure to achieve certain goals. Who am I ? A question everyone at some point will ask themselves. Who you are is your self identity, the way you look at yourself and your relationship to the world. You don't need to be accepted by others. You need to accept yourself. If you focus on what people think about you, you will become increasingly self-conscious and dependent on how others perceive you. People often focus on what other people say and think about them instead of focusing on themselves and their self worth.

Reading Response 10/06

In a reading from Borderlands/La Frontera:The New Mestiza by Gloria Anzaldua and a reading from Fast Speaking Woman by Anne Waldman both writers described the their own process and literary techniques in writing stories and poetries. Both writers described writing as a spiritual, supernatural experience. Anzaldua mentioned, “Though it is a flawed thing – a clumsy complex, groping blind thing – for me it is alive, infused with spirit. I talk to it, it talks to me” (185), she personified the writings being done. Waldman on the other hand wrote, “Powerful demonic visualizations are conjured. Images of rotting corpse, skull cups of blood, wrathful deities of all horrific description haunt and vivify the premises” (176).  Which describes how writing is like being possessed and the brain just projecting images in your head as you write.

Anzaldua reminds me of the narrator of Outside the Bones by Lyn Di Ioro, Fina. Just like Fina, Anzaldua’s writing gives the readers a lot of imagery. She uses metaphors to describe things. Besides the writing techniques used, another similarities both characters have is having spiritual practices and even sacrificing animals, in this case, the chicken is used for its blood.

Waldman on the other hand uses different literary technique, she uses anaphora and symbolism. In her poem the Fast Speaking Woman, each lines started the same.

I’m a shouting woman

I’m a speech woman

I’m an atmosphere woman

I’m an airtight woman

I’m a flesh woman

And it continues on and on with the same theme of I’m a ___ woman. Despite starting each line with an “I”, she just doesn’t refer the woman as only herself, but everyone woman. The “I” symbolize the diversity of women. For example, based on her example she stated, “I saw two cops approaching from the distance. As they closed in I ascertained that they were both women. I immediately sprung to ‘I’m the blue cop woman,’ ‘I’m the woman with the billy club,’ ‘I’m the powerful bust cop lady assigned to close this reading down,’ and so on” (179).  This shows that she’s not writing about herself as the woman, but more of the different women she encounters from her own experiences.

Reading Response 10/06

Anzaldua writes about the fact that "White America" has suppressed the indigenous by taking what comprises the natives and sort of re-branding it and taking credit for it. She talks about the whites stealing music and art work and calling it something new when the reality of it is that it is deeply rooted in the people who originally created it. She mentions that, "White America has only attended the body of the earth in order to exploit it"(186), and to be honest I think she's completely right. (In most aspects) She makes a very valid point which is, "..people, have cut themselves off from their spiritual roots."(186) If you've ever studied the Aztecs, Incas or any other indigenous people, you can see similarities between beliefs, music and art.Now everything is very uniform and it would appear that only finite principals really separate humans now.

In, "Fast Speaking Woman", by Anne Waldman, we see the same idea of self identification. Waldman makes this quite clear in the way in which she structures her poem. By having almost every sentence being , "I'm", the idea of people (women in specific) knowing who they are is really forced upon the read. Like I said, I agree with the idea that foreign conquest somewhat ruined humanity. The oppression that was forced upon natives caused people to lose sight of who they really are and what they truly believe in, and Waldman seems to be trying to make a case against that in a way. But, at the same time she sees both sides of the situation and we know this because she mentions Maria Sabina saying, "From the moment the foreigners arrived, the saint children lost their purity". (180) 

All this being said I agree with Waldman when she is talking about poets and says, "...but sometimes, because they're available as 'antennae of the race', they can receive or tap into energy sources someone else might be deaf or impervious to".(181) Poets are some of the only people who are in sync with themselves because they're here to observe not to follow. Poets see things other people can't see, which is why when reading poetry, everyone will have different opinions on the piece at hand, but that's the beauty of poetry. Poets force everyone to be themselves. No one is ever wrong about poetry because it's how you interpret it. The idea of thinking for yourself is what I feel most people today lack. Social media has this grasp on society today and in a sense is the new "foreigner", tainting the minds of the people. Everyone is too busy following the latest "trends" on twitter, tumblr and facebook that they forget to live life, and in a way, possibly have the opportunity to discover the next big thing, or "trend".