Mestiza Consciousness Analysis

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The Sundance Film Associations luncheon celebrating Women in Film in January of 2017 was covered by various news outlets, but with headlines that were not praising the speeches made there. Rather The Los Angeles Times characterized it as a triggered and heated debate, Mashable as uncomfortable, and Indiewire as actresses speaking over one another and thoughts going to sets of deaf ears. The main women in the debate were actresses Shirley MacLaine, Salma Hayek, and Jessica Williams, who are incredibly different from the others in many aspects, but most notably, in age, race and their stances on identity and victimhood. The debate began with how to handle maintaining and promoting a woman’s voice and identity in the face of the often sexist …show more content…

Anzaldua’s Mestiza Consciousness can be seen through “racial, ideological, cultural and biological cross-pollinization,” she calls it “an “alien” consciousness…a new mestiza consciousness…a consciousness of the borderlands” (quoted in Bizzell and Herzberg 1597). This consciousness, according to Anzaldua, is born out of the areas (or ‘borders’) through which a person diverges from a perceived norm, and experiences adversity. The Mestiza Consciousness aims to embrace these aspects of our identities, which are shaped by the ‘twin skins’ of language and ethnicity, that are reflected in how we perceive and process the world; “she communicates…documents the struggle. She reinterprets history and, using new symbols, she shapes new myths. She adopts new perspectives.” (quoted in Bizzell and Herzberg 1600). However, this quote from Anzaldua’s Borderlands/La Frontera parallels, and most clearly displays, how the Sundance Film Associations luncheon is the Mestiza Consciousness in action, is “cradled in one culture, sandwiched between two cultures, straddling all three cultures and their value systems…a struggle of borders, an inner war” (quoted in Bizzell and Herzberg

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