By Jesica Siham Fernández

I was introduced to writings by Gloria E. Anzaldúa during my second year of undergraduate studies at the University of California, Santa Cruz. As a transmigrant youth growing up between México and the California Central Valley, I attended public schools that were intended to be “bilingual” but were severely under-resourced. Compared to my Spanish, my English writing was below academic standards, and I had to complete a series of remedial writing seminars. It was in the context of one of these seminars — at the hilltop of Merrill College — where I first felt affirmed, seen, and heard, as a student. I understood, in a very embodied and intimate way, what Anzaldúa described as the borderlands.

Author and parents at Merrill College dorms on move-in day UC Santa Cruz.

As an educator, I strive to be very intentional about introducing my students to various authors whose writings, voices, experiences, and embodied knowledge are rooted in decolonial, liberatory, and feminist standpoints. Prior to reading Anzaldúa, I did not feel that I belonged in the university. I felt like an imposter, a burden, and a diversity body count. My student experiences at a predominantly white university have shaped my approach to teaching and pedagogy, and my devoted commitment to ensure that students feel “at home” in my classroom. 

More than a decade later, one of many quotes by Anzaldúa that I find particularly relevant in this moment makes reference to the choices she had to make. In other words, how she carved her own path as a form of dissent and resistance to the hetero-normative patriarchy of Mexican, and Chicano culture: 

For a woman of my culture there used to be only three directions she could turn: to the Church as a nun, to the streets as a prostitute, or to the home as a mother. Today some of us have a fourth choice: entering the world by way of education and career and becoming self-autonomous persons. (Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza, 1987, page 17)

Like Anzaldúa, I too choose the fourth path. I tried the first path – to become a nun – but I had (and still have) far too many critical thoughts and questions for the Church to appease me. As I prepare to submit my tenure and promotion file this summer I have returned to writings by Anzaldúa both as a source of affirmation and inspiration. Sometimes in her writings, I find the answers to my questions, or the wisdom to build a bridge, walk an unpaved path, spread my wings, or transform the contradictions and tensions into a state of Coatlicue.

Author’s drawing of Coatlicue.

Coatlicue is the consuming internal whirlwind, the symbol or the under-ground aspects of the psyche. Coatlicue is the mountain, the Earth Mother who conceived a celestial being out of her cavernous wombs. Goddess of birth and death, Coatlicue gives and takes away life; she is the incarnation of cosmic processes. (Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza, 1987, page 46)

Coatlicue depicts the contradictory. In her figure, all the symbols important to the religion and philosophy of the Aztecs are integrated. Like Medusa, the Gorgon, she is a symbol of the fusion of opposites: the eagle and the serpent, heaven and the underworld, life and death, mobility and immobility, beauty and horror. (Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza, 1987, page 47)

When the shadows of imposterism, undeservingness, and anxieties resurface, as I prepare for this professional academic milestone, I turn to Anzaldúa’s writings for wisdom to reclaim my breath. Anzaldúa (and swimming) have become the antidote to a summer of anxiety and panic attacks, unlike any other time before. 

I find myself gasping and grasping for air. For the capacity to breathe. The anxieties and uncertainties often surface like a waterfall over me, flooding me with thoughts of worst-case scenarios contrasted with the steady affirmations I have been jotting down over the years, that like a riverbank, all things will flow toward the greater good and that I am an accomplished teacher-scholar. 

Much like Anzaldúa’s writings, water offers me a moment to stand still and pause for reflection. Water is a teacher. In the waters I find lessons to apply to my life, reflections and musings that bring me to the present moment so that I can be. Most importantly, water — being wrapped up in it while swimming, for example — reminds me to breathe. 

Swimming teaches me that breathing is not an option or choice; it is a necessity. Breathing is perhaps the only quality of my being that I have some capacity to control. When I swim, nothing else matters only the breath. The mind is quiet. The body is in a synchronized state with the inhales and exhales. The breath is all. 

Watering, or swimming, teaches me that whatever load or burden I carry with me can be held and then let go. I am buoyant, light and at ease. Life is every single breath. 

Anzaldúa teaches me the importance of breathing too, noting in her book Light in the Dark/Luz en lo Oscuro: Rewriting Identity, Spirituality, Reality (2015): 

When we own our shadow [rather than repressing, projecting, or being unaware of it], we allow the breath of healing to enter our lives. (page 22)

Noting that my breathing has become compromised by my thoughts lately, I do not underestimate the breath's healing potential. Where I can breathe with ease, I belong. To belong is to be connected to the present moment. Rooted. Grounded. Anchored – even while floating and treading waters. The connection can be physical, social, cultural, spiritual or metaphorical. To belong is to be. Just be. 

A sense of wisdom or deeper self-understanding can emerge to allow for ease. Anzaldúa and swimming offer this for me. How I wish I lived closer to the ocean side so that I too could experience what Anzaldúa described: 

When you go through a heavy difficult time, and you don't have the resources, you can't go to anybody in the society or in the community, you finally fall back on yourself. What I did was that I started breathing. I had to like breathing and to start meditating in order to get through the pain and that whole difficult period. And all that reconnected me with nature, from which I had gotten away. So this is why I like to live at the ocean, like I do now here in Santa Cruz. You know, to live near the ocean means that you just go there and then get another infusion of energy. All the petty problems you have fall away because of the presence of the ocean. It therefore is a real spiritual presence for me. I feel that way with some trees, the wind, serpents, snakes, deserts, too. So in the periods that I was going through, my very darkest times when there was nobody there for me, I realized that at least I had to be there for me. (Anzaldúa, Interview)

Perhaps one day I will return to living just steps away from West Cliff Drive, but until then I swim in the public pool of my housing complex and read Anzaldúa for answers that will settle my anxious mind while reminding me that my heart, soul, and body-breath are expansive and at ease. 

Author’s photo of West Cliff Drive in Santa Cruz.