Border-Line Personalities:
A New Generation of Latinas
Dish on Sex, Sass, and Cultural Shifting
What It's About
What does it mean to be a Latina woman in America? Is it possible to be Latina and 100 percent American at the same time? What challenges do Latinas face when dating within their own culture? Or outside of it? How does your education impact your identity as a Latina woman, especially when you are the first person in your family to attend college? What does it mean to define one's identity in relation to others? What does it mean to claim one's role and power as a writer, Latina and woman of color? What does telling our story mean for us, our families and communities? Is it ok to speak truth where before there had only been silence?
Some of the best young Latina writers pose and attempt to answer these questions, among others in Border-Line Personalities: A New Generation of Latinas Dish on Sex, Sass, and Cultural Shifting. Although this anthology was printed in 2004, the topics, themes and stories in the book are as relevant today as it was when it was first printed. Whether you identify as being Latina, or not, this book will speak to the universal experience of finding our selves and our communities in the "in-between" spaces that make up America's conceptual borderlands.
Bibiliographic Information
Mulligan, Michelle Herrera, and Robyn Moreno, eds.
Border-line Personalities: A New Generation of Latinas Dish on Sex, Sass, and Cultural Shifting. New York: Rayo, 2004. Print.
GENRE/SUB-GENRE
Border-Line Personalities is a work of creative non-fiction that features personal essays and memoir by Latina women. Just like the women featured in the anthology, this book defies classification and borders. You can find this book in several sections: Personal Essays, Anthologies, Feminst Writing, Ethnic Literarture, among others.
AGE/ GRADE APPROPRIATNESS
While some sections can be read as standalone pieces for readers of all ages, as a compilation, the anthology may be most appropriate for readers aged 15-17 in grades 11th through 12th, because of some mature subject matter involving violence and sex.
"After reaching out to over a hundred colleagues and friends, we selected essays that best represented the conflicts we have in defining ourselves every day. After reviewing them, we realized they appropriately represented the four defining moments in a woman's life: experiencing childhood, falling in love, finding yourself, and choosing your calling. We coaxed, cajoled, and overanalyzed with our writers until we found the kernels of truth that bore these honest confessions.
"After hearing these stories, we realized this book is about conflict. We are sexually experiemental, sassy, and critical of our families and our heritage. Yet we're deeply conflicted about what that says about us and who we are. The constant state of confusion, angst, and anger brought on by our mamis' vales, our bosses' demands, and our personal passions inspired Border-Line Personalities. The title evokes the many borders we live on as Latinas: the border between our families's cultures and North American ideals; the border between our work and home lives; the border between our dreams and desires and the daily comprises we make" (Introduction by co-editor Michelle Herrera Mulligan, xxviii-xxix).
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THEMES
SETTING: Border-Lines & Border-Lands
Because the anthology is a collection of personal essays and short memoir pieces by more than twenty Latina writers, settings range in both geography and meaning of space and place. Rather than a physical place, the book can be better described as being rooted in the conceptual space of "border-lines" and "border-lands."
"The title evokes the many borders we live on as Latinas: the border between our families's cultures and North American ideals; the border between our work and home lives; the border between our dreams and desires and the daily comprises we make" (xxix).