Deborah R. Vargas, “Dissonant Divas in Chicana Music: The Limits of La Onda” (U of Minnesota Press, 2012)

New Books in Latino Studies · Sep 14, 2015 · 1h 13m

In her transformative text Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza, Gloria Anzaldua referred to the U.S.-Mexico border region as “una herida abierta (an open wound) where the Third World grates against the first and bleeds. And before a scab forms it hemorrhages again, the lifeblood of two worlds merging to form a third country–a border culture.” To Anzaldua the “open wound” or new culture of the U.S.-Mexico borderlands resulted from “the emotional residue of an unnatural boundary” (i.e., the imposition of the U.S.-Mexico border in the mid-19th century). Since the establishment of the…