ABSTRACT
Chicana/o/x and Latina/o/x subjects comprise 17 percent of the United States’s population, but less than 5 percent of university faculty. Chicana/x and Latina/x academic “others” develop new knowledge claims steeped in the experiences of their beleaguered communities. For example, Latinx scholar-activists document and disseminate the narratives of imprisonment experienced by thousands of Latinx migrants along the U.S.–Mexico border and children torn from the arms of parents by agents of the Trump administration along with the recent murder of innocents targeting Mexicans in El Paso, Texas. The hatred that grew in the Trump era, when love was increasingly shadowed by fear, is but another legacy of colonialism and gendered racism. Research on Latinx disenfranchisement in education, employment, and over-representation in the ranks of the poor are all too often objectified within a deficit perspective. This chapter analyzes how Chicanx and Latinx subjects in the USA navigate the borderlands of white supremacy, nativism, and fear to resist structural violence. Building on the insights of Chicana feminist theorist Gloria Anzaldúa, I utilize a borderlands intersectionality perspective that both critiques key canonical explanations for social inequality and taps the insights of Chicana/x and Latina/x feminisms to distinguish alternative sites for empowerment that emphasize the assets of their communities. I conclude with some thoughts on the increasing significance of borderlands intersectionalities to provide new insights into women’s resistance, agency, and empowerment.
