The struggle is inner: Chicano, indio, American Indian, mojado, mexicano, immigrant Latino, Anglo in power, working class Anglo, Black, Asian--our psyches resemble the bordertowns and are populated by the same people. The struggle has always been inner, and is played out in outer terrains. Awareness of our situation must come before inner changes, which in turn come before changes in society. Nothing happens in the "real" world unless it first happens in the images in our heads.
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes that true struggle and change begin within ourselves before manifesting in society.
Gloria E. Anzaldua's quote reflects the notion that our internal struggles and identities, shaped by diverse cultural and racial backgrounds, are interconnected and fundamental to the experience of societal change. She argues that awareness of these inner conflicts is essential for personal transformation, which ultimately leads to broader societal changes. The focus on the 'images in our heads' suggests that our perceptions and mental landscapes fundamentally influence our outer realities.
In practice
During a motivational speech about personal growth.
We cannot educate white women and take them by the hand. Most of us are willing to help but we can't do the white woman's homework for her. That's an energy drain. More times than she cares to remember, Nellie Wong, Asian American feminist writer, has been called by white women wanting a list of Asian American women who can give readings or workshops. We are in danger of being reduced to purveyors of resource lists.
I am visible-see this Indian face-yet I am invisible. I both blind them with my beak nose and am their blind spot. But I exist, we exist. They'd like to think I have melted in the pot. But I haven't. We haven't.
Nobody’s going to save you. No one’s going to cut you down, cut the thorns thick around you. No one’s going to storm the castle walls nor kiss awake your birth, climb down your hair, nor mount you onto the white steed. There is no one who will feed the yearning. Face it. You will have to do, do it yourself.
Like all people, we perceive the version of reality that our culture communicates. Like others having or living in more than one culture, we get multiple, often opposing messages. The coming together of two self-consistent but habitually incomparable frames of reference causes un choque, a cultural collision.
We are taught that the body is an ignorant animal intelligence dwells only in the head. But the body is smart. It does not discern between external stimuli and stimuli from the imagination. It reacts equally viscerally to events from the imagination as it does to real events.
Every nation ridicules other nations, and all are right.
Of all the grief's that harass the distressed; sure the most bitter is a scornful jest.
I am forced to get my living by the labour of my hand; and the sweat of my brow... for bitter bread, earned under the frowns of some who have no natural or divine right to be above me, and entirely owe their grandeur and honor to grinding the faces of the poor.
Those to whom worshiping is a window, to open but also to shut, have not yet visited the house of their souls whose windows are open from dawn to dawn.
Let him be just and deal kindly with my people, for the dead are not powerless. Dead, did I say? There is no death, only change of worlds.
One should absorb the colour of life, but one should never remember its details. Details are always vulgar.
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