Can I share this face with you? 

       

My honey brown skin that turns a deep mocha in the sun. May I share my wide nose and the fullness of my lips. It's been a long journey to this place of self acceptance. I used to hate my darkening skin, my fat lips, and wide nose. I wanted to be like the girls in Seventeen Magazine. You know the ones that still grace the covers? With flowing blond hair, blue eyes and porcelain skin. It's taken almost a lifetime to love this face, this skin, these lips. To accept my queerness. To be femme and queer. To be Brown and queer and femme. All colliding at once with equal importance. I'm all those things simultaneously. Ya'll I'm feeling beautiful. 

    
To live in the Borderlands means you

are neither hispana india negra española  
     ni gabacha, eres mestiza, mulata, half-breed
     caught in the crossfire between camps
     while carrying all five races on your back
     not knowing which side to turn to, run from;

To live in the Borderlands means knowing
     that the india in you, betrayed for 500 years,
     is no longer speaking to you,
     that mexicanas call you rajetas,
     that denying the Anglo inside you
     is as bad as having denied the Indian or Black;

Cuando vives in la frontera
     people walk through you, the wind steals your voice,
     you’re a burra, buey, scapegoat,
     forerunner of a new race,
     half and half—both woman and man, neither—
     a new gender;

To live in the Borderlands means to
     put chile in the borscht,
     eat whole wheat tortillas,
     speak Tex-Mex with a Brooklyn accent;
     be stopped by la migra at the border checkpoints;

Living in the Borderlands means you fight hard to
     resist the gold elixir beckoning from the bottle,
     the pull of the gun barrel,
     the rope crushing the hollow of your throat;


In the Borderlands
     you are the battleground
     where enemies are kin to each other;
     you are at home, a stranger,
     the border disputes have been settled
     the volley of shots have shattered the truce
     you are wounded, lost in action
     dead, fighting back;


To live in the Borderlands means
     the mill with the razor white teeth wants to shred off 
     your olive-red skin, crush out the kernel, your heart
     pound you pinch you roll you out
     smelling like white bread but dead;

To survive the Borderlands
     you must live sin fronteras
     be a crossroads

-Gloria E. Anzaldúa

gabacha: a Chicano term for a white woman
rajetas: literally, “split,” that is, having betrayed your word
burra: donkey
buey: oxen
sin fronteras: without borders