Reading Response 10/6

The impression I had after reading both texts is that both writers "travel" through poetry, As Anne Waldman put it on page 182, "every woman is a dakini or sky-walker, one who does not have to walk on the groud, who can travel and can reconfigure the world through the play of her imagination." They use this imagination to story tell in different styles. Anne Waldman through chant like association poem using "I" but refering to all women as well.

In what strikes me in Gloria Anzaldua article is that she views the differences of Western European culture different than in Tribal culture in where she says that art is displayed behind glass planes, protected with guards, guarded with insurance, viewed by the intellects who can understand what is infront of them. This contrast with what is art in tribal cultures. Arts are not something that only the most intelligent view, it is not just a spectator but a participant in a ritual, they are in homes, and sacred places. They aren't treated as objects but as a person.

It's quite intriguing the way both create their story telling, one using a chat like association poetry, the other by evoking emotions with images.

Reading Response: From Borderlands/ La Frontera: The New Mestiza and From Fast speaking woman

          From Borderlands/ La Frontera: The New Mestiza by Gloria E. Anzaldúa and the poem “From Fast speaking woman” by Anne Waldman share similar themes. Both of these works illustrate the idea of oppression through their writing. The book From Borderlands/ La Frontera: The New Mestiza illustrates oppression through the use of first-person narrative. The author discusses how she created the stories and reveals herself through her writing. One of the examples of oppression is portray by the idea of internal-oppression.

            The text states: “Writing produces anxiety…Being a writer feels very much like being a Chicana, or being queer--a lot of squirming, coming up against all sorts of walls…nothing defined or definite, boundless (Anzaldúa 189).In this passage, the author expresses her feelings towards her writing process. The interruption occurs as she attempts to interpret and make images through her writing. The internal oppression that the author has created caused her to undergo the feeling of anxiety. The author provides the description of what it feels to be writer. She compared the feeling of being a writer similar to being a Chicana (female Mexican-Americans in the United States) or a queer (sexual and gender minorities). Society treats these groups different from the treatment given to majority groups especially males. As compared in her writing, the oppression that these groups faced is similar to the types of “wall” or struggles that are against them, which is boundless and undefined. Perhaps, the author felt that her writing is held back because of gender and race.

            Similar to Anzaldúa’s book, Waldman expresses the idea of oppression through the term, women oppression. The poem is written through the use of first person narrative which was inspired by the record texts of Maria Sabina, who was a Mazatec shaman. This poem can be considered a poem that influences the social life of women. She has included all the type of women in society in the form of a chant. Society believed that women were inferior to men, which resulted in the neglect of women’s economic and political rights. The text states:  “because I don’t have spit/ because I don’t have rubbish/because I don’t have dust/because I don’t have that which is air/ because I am air” (Waldman 171). These lines illustrate the oppression that was placed on women by society. The author expresses the idea of women being thought of as useless by comparing them to air. However, this is different from what I believe. I believe that air is important as it is important to our respiration system and they are boundless. This is similar to women in term of what they can be and could do. The author illustrates the important points through the use of repetition of “I’m…, I am… and I have been...”The author uses this to build a climax and created a strong emotion. The repetition also helps to encourage women to become a winner and free themselves. 

Reading Response 10/06

Reading Response 10/6

Anne Waldman, author of “Fast Speaking Woman”, discusses the topic of women’s identity and the influence that poetry has on their lives. The author uses free association in her writing and represents herself and every other women in the list chant. She states, “I'm an abalone woman / I'm the abandoned woman / I'm the woman abashed, the gibberish woman / the aborigine woman, the woman absconding"(Waldman 172). Her use of anaphora shows a rhythmic pattern in the poem. The constant repetition of “I” in the beginning of each line is allowing her to influence other women to achieve their goals. She portrays the importance that society has on female gender. Waldman tries to incorporate all kinds of women in society in her writing. There is a sense of encouragement to all women in the poem to try to uplift themselves from their difficulties.

In "From Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza", Gloria Anzaldua begins with her own personal experiences of how she started writing poems and telling stories to her younger sister. Throughout the reading, Anzaldua talks about finding ones identity and how hard it can be. She is Mexican and American, so finding her own identity without losing the other is something that a lot of people can relate to. She brings together poetry, culture, and history to illustrate the borderlines of people who live between Mexico and the United States. She looks into culture at the physical and spiritual spaces that divides us.

The most common similarity between these two poems is the idea of women and self-identity. Waldman and Anzaldua both do a great job encouraging women in different societies. Both authors use a narrative point of view in their writing. I think their own experiences helped them write these pieces of literature. They both discuss how women face barriers in society and are enlightening other women about equality and freedom. They also show how language plays a huge role in forming ones identity. Living in a male dominated world can cause women to feel like they cannot succeed but Waldman and Anzaldua shows us that they can strive to show their importance in society.

Reading Response 10/06

         The excerpts, From Borderlands/La Frontera:The New Mestiza by Gloria Anzaldua and From Fast Speaking Women by Anne Waldman, discusses about the distinctive characteristics of ethnopoetics and its impact on world literature. Waldman, for instance, informs her readers about the process she went through when creating her poem, “Fast Speaking Women.“ She claims to have gotten inspiration from Maria Sabina, a Mazatec curandera or healer that was known to be the Saint Mother of the Sacred Mushrooms. Maria Sabina however, was not just a spiritual women that did rituals, she was also recognized for her poetry and chants. Her poem, “La sacerdotiza de los hongos,” presented to Waldman the ethnopoetic structure of poetry. Waldman was fascinated by Sabina’s potent voice and therefore decided to interwove some of her lines in her poem, “Fast Speaking Women.” The reason why she did this was so that she could demonstrate power within language. Waldman states, “ A woman list. And declaration of power through accretion/ repitition. Efficacy through language” (178). Certainly, her constant repetition of “I” and “ women” is to give women the power they did not have during the time period the poem was written.  Waldman continues, “I enjoyed the bold equation of human “ I” identity being at one with animal, word, lantern. Now it would be omnipresent with “ women” (175). Waldman liked the strength that oral poetry demonstrated especially, when she was presenting feminist ideas. Her goal was to represent through her language the shouting women and speech women mentioned in her poem. 

One major characteristic of ethnopoetics that caught my attention was its way of making the writer reach a Shamanic state and world of imagination. These two texts connect because both writers, Waldman and Anzaldua believe that writing can be a connection to the spiritual world. For example, Anzaldua explains how ancient Aztecs believed that poetry with metaphors and symbols would allow communication with the Divine (187). Also, she described how writing heals her by reconstructing the traumas she holds (187).  Waldman demonstrates agreement with Anzaldua when she says, “ poetry always seemed an aspect of the spiritual path” (176). She elaborates further on this idea when she mentions Sabina’s knowledge in using the power of language to heal. Sabina says, “ Language makes the dying return to life. The sick to recover their health when they hear the words taught by the saint children. I cure with Language, the Language of the saint children…” ( 180). Therefore, both authors believe that language has power because it enables us to imagine and to transform ourselves into a shaman. As Anzaldua states, “ The ability of story ( prose and poetry) to transform the storyteller and the listener into something or someone else is shamanistic. The writer, as shape-changer, is a nahual, a shaman” (184).

Fast Speaking Woman/Borderlands La Frontera

In Fast Speaking Woman, the poem/chant is describing different types of women and who they are. In the beginning she says that while writing the poem she was trying to make her chant by “naming all the kinds of women there are to be, interweaving personal details.” From this we see that although she uses the word I, she is not only speaking about herself. She is speaking about all of the different types of women that there are, it is a “chant for all women”. While writing this she was trying to find herself and create an identity. Her chants come from different experiences she has had in her life.

In Borderlands La Frontera, Gloria Anzaldua starts her story by describing how she started writing her poems. She starts by mentioning that she would tell stories or “cuentos” to her little sister in order to put her to bed. She also states that she felt like she needed to “bathe, feed and clothe” her work as it was being manifested. This idea to me makes it seem like her stories or “work” are very powerful. She personifies her work. They way that she describes it is as if writing her stories take over her and she just has to give in. She also speaks on different experiences in her life, which are the grounds for some of her poems.

Both of these poems have a similar theme as well as style. They both use the style of repetition with the word I. They both are describing different type of women. They are trying to create a sense of identity for all of the women. Both stories also describe the processes in which both writers took to write their poems and what inspired them. Both poets describe their writings as something powerful that can take over them. They can both be described as feminist trying to create an identity for themselves as well as all women. They aren’t being allowed to be who they need to be and are both being restricted. Personal experiences help both of these women to create their poems.

reading response to fast speaking woman and borderland

    
                     
      If you read both Poems you'll  see the primary focus is on identity. Speaking woman is a passage that shows the identity of woman in society, while Borderland is about someone being accepted into society. They both are about the life style and ways women are viewed in the society we live in till present.
      Fast speaking woman is a prime example of poetry's influence to the social life of women,  or even more be viewed has a woman's influence in society. Anne Waldman notes a little bit of herself in the poem. The world we live in today is dominated by males ,who run everything in the society while woman are seen has the support system and should take the backseat. The author's style of writing is more like a chant, basically about female emancipation.
    While Borderland on the other hand paints a moving portrait for the search of ones identity in a world that refuses to allow one. The physical borderland between the U.S and Mexico helps create the psychological fence that a person is put on when they are denied a culture and a place in society. Language is also seen as a barrier of identity that segregates an individual. The restrictions placed  by cultural institutions  to protect is aimed to suffocate. The culture and  church  insist that woman are subservient to males. Woman  have to fight for their voices to be heard but this is based on the  time line the two  poems was written during the  early 1960's as a poet foremost but with a lifetime involvement as well in creating and caring for poetic communities. Both poets are fighting for the voice and identity  of  women in the society and to make awareness of the borderland restrictions confining us.