Mestiza Consciousness

Abstract

This entry summarizes Gloria Anzaldúa's theorizing of “mestiza consciousness,” or mestizaje , in Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza , published in 1987. Mestiza consciousness deconstructs the impact of patriarchy and colonialism on the Chicana psyche, reclaims indigenous spirituality and feminist cultural archetypes, and remaps the border zones created by empire by voicing the experience of living in marginalized, interstitial cultural spaces that serve as zones of resistance to racism, gender discrimination, class oppression, sexual repression, and colonial domination. Anzaldúa offers mestizaje as a critical methodology and a locus of Chicana and woman‐of‐color feminist agency.