ABSTRACT
The function of the border, Anzaldúa writes, is to define who is “us” and who is “them,” but the borderlands created by the “emotional residue” of this “unnatural boundary” are populated by all manner of Los atravesados, the crossed ones, not just “Chicanos, Indians, and blacks” but “the squint-eyed, the perverse, the queer, the troublesome, the mongrel, the mulatto, the half-breed, the half dead.” A borderland is a vague and undetermined place created by the emotional residue of an unnatural boundary. It is in a constant state of transition. The prohibited and forbidden are its inhabitants. The only “legitimate” inhabitants are those in power, the whites and those who align themselves with whites. Tension grips the inhabitants of the borderlands like a virus. Ambivalence and unrest reside there and death is no stranger.
