Sandra Cisneros’un Mango Sokağı’ndaki Ev ve Gloria Anzaldua’nın Sınır Bölgeleri/ Hudut: Yeni Melez Kadın romanlarında Meksikalı Kadınların Sınır Deneyimi

Abstract

This paper aims to suggest how Chicanas in The House on Mango Street and in Borderland/La Frontera: New Mestiza construct their own identity on the physical and psychological borderland between Mexico and The States segregating and separating individuals because of language, culture, gender, sexuality, ethnicity and class. How they achieve their self-fulfillment at the end of their odyssey is also presented in this paper. The House on Mango Street and Borderlands/La Frontera New Mestiza are the epitomes of border writing dwelling on the tumult and challenges of physical and psychological borderland between the States and Mexico and explaining the social and economic conditions of the subjects. Borderland dwellers experience illegal migration, economic disparity, social and financial unrest, sense of displacement and frustration. They have hybrid identities and use hybrid language of English and Spanish. This paper discusses male oppression and domestication, American ideological dominance over Mexico and a quest for a dignified life in both novels. Therefore, this study scrutinizes the lives and the motives of the characters in The House on Mango Street from the perspective of its female protagonist, Esperenza who is on the threshold of womanhood and the identity confusion of protagonist writer, Gloria Anzaldua herself in Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza.