Blackwell Reference Online

Extract

The psychological borderlands, the sexual borderlands and the spiritual borderlands are not particular to the Southwest. In fact, the Borderlands are physically present wherever two or more cultures edge each other, where people of different races occupy the same territory, where under, lower, middle and upper classes touch, where the space between two individuals shrinks with intimacy. ( Gloria Anzaldúa, 2007 : 4) Borderlands' existence and identity, as the late Anzaldúa points out, cannot be limited to geography or specific groups and must account for the coming together and contestation of peoples. While North American borderlands are in one sense physical and topographical places where various cultures and peoples meet, they are also spaces where dynamic identities are crafted as a result of the lived realities of colonized and colonizing peoples. A borderlands existence arises out of a confluence of identities that are peculiar to living as an edgewalker between two worlds. Borderlands women and men live in intensely charged geographic, ethnic, and cultural milieus and their religious beliefs and practices reflect the contested and coterminous terrain in which they live. While some historians of US–Mexico borderlands include religion in their larger inquiry, it has largely been up to scholars of religious studies to elucidate the role of religion for these borderlanders. North ... log in or subscribe to read full text