G.A.: Well, when Chicanas read Borderlands, when it was read by little Chicanas in particular, it somehow legitimated them. They saw that I was code-switching, which is what a lot of Chicanas were doing in real life as well, and for the first time after reading that book they seemed to realize, “Oh, my way of writing and speaking is okay” and, “Oh, she is writing about La Virgen de Guadalupe, about la Llorona, about the corridos, the gringos, the abusive, et cetera. So if she [Gloria Anzaldua] does it, why not me as well?” The book gave them permission to do the same thing. So they started using code-switching and writing about all the issues they have to deal with in daily life. To them, it was like somebody was saying: You are just as important as a woman as anybody from another race. And the experiences that you have are worth being told and written about.
KPI_Library Bookmarks on 11 Mar 10By Eric Bettinger and Bridget Terry Long, forthcoming in Economic Inequality and Higher Education: Access, Persistence and Success, Stacy Dickert-Conlin and Ross Rubenstein, eds., Russell Sage Foundation Press, 2006. Looks at preparation and remediation generally, but also focuses on a database of students maintained by the Ohio Board of Regents.
