Shapeshifting Subjects: Gloria Anzaldúa’s Naguala and Border Arte by Kelli D. Zaytoun

Abstract

Reviewed by: Shapeshifting Subjects: Gloria Anzaldúa’s Naguala and Border Arte by Kelli D. Zaytoun Andrea Hernández Holm SHAPESHIFTING SUBJECTS: GLORIA ANZALDÚA’S NAGUALA AND BORDER ARTE, by Kelli D. Zaytoun. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2022. 172 pp. $110 hardback; $25 paperback; $19.95 ebook. Kelli D. Zaytoun’s Shapeshifting Subjects: Gloria Anzaldúa’s Naguala and Border Arte offers an exploration of Chicana feminist scholar Gloria Anzaldúa’s theories surrounding subjectivity and the power of identity and identity-making. Zaytoun focuses on Anzaldúa’s concept of nagualismo—a state of being in which change is possible and constant. To name processes of identity-making and shifting that build resiliency, Anzaldúa draws upon ways of knowing from Nahua (Aztec) cultures. Zaytoun brings this concept of nagualismo into conversation with Arab American feminism to illustrate how it can be applied to the navigation of shared experiences and the work [End Page 170] toward solutions for marginalization. Zaytoun’s examination aligns with most existing thought on Anzaldúa’s work, effectively describing the elements of nagualismo and acknowledging common critiques. Nagualismo provides for the possibility of not only surviving but healing the legacies of exclusion and oppression. It derives from Nahua epistemologies and an Indigenous approach to self-realization, and Zaytoun argues that it presents a means of resistance to Western modes of knowing (p. 64). She acknowledges that the tenets of nagualismo cannot be generalized, as they are rooted in the Nahua experience, as interpreted and lived by Anzaldúa. The attention to the complex role of Indigenous philosophies is helpful in complicating the theory and exploring how it may be understood in Anzaldúa’s work, but Zaytoun’s examination of nagualismo would have been enhanced by a deeper discussion that unpacks Anzaldúa’s development of the concept and the problematics that other scholars have identified. Zaytoun does point to criticism of Anzaldúa’s approaches to Indigeneity, particularly Anzaldúa’s nod to Mexican scholar José Vasconcelos’s La Raza Cosmica (1925). Vasconcelos promoted the idea that from Mexican mestizaje (“mixing” of races) emerged the ideal individual, identifiable by the “best” qualities of contributing races (that is, European, Indigenous, and African). This theory has long been criticized as racist. Vasconcelos glossed over the violence from which mestizaje emerged, promoted erasure of cultural identity, and furthered the political agenda of the conservative Mexican government of the early twentieth century. Critics argue that in the development of her theories, Anzaldúa accepted Vasconcelos’s ideas. Other concerns about Anzaldúa’s approach include the exclusion of Afro-Mexican, Afro-Mestizo, and Indigenous experiences other than Nahua. There is also an absence of attention to Asian and Middle Eastern influences in the United States-Mexico borderlands, where Anzaldúa’s theories are rooted. Zaytoun suggests that an examination of nagualismo affords members of other cultural groups—in the case of her work Arab Americans—means to draw upon their own place-based knowledge as they work to resist and heal against colonial structures. In Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza (1987), Anzaldúa explains that her resiliency to violence includes the resources of “home,” which she carries with her wherever she goes.1 It is important to acknowledge the significance of place and place-based knowledge in resistance and survival among marginalized communities. Many have been displaced from their homelands due to a number of circumstances, including colonialism, war, and climate change, but cultural knowledge derived from the experience of place can be sustaining and support persistence, growth, and continuing movement forward. [End Page 171] In chapter three, “Connections with Arab American Feminism,” Zaytoun presents interesting considerations for aligning nagualismo with Arab American feminism. She gestures to self-actualization as an important commonality, pointing to aspects in reflective writings by Arab American feminists that are similar to nagualismo. For example, Zaytoun finds similarities among writings by Joanna Kadi, Therese Saliba, Diana Abu-Jaber, and Anzaldúa in the ways that the senses and the body are invoked in the processes of reflection and awareness. She goes on to suggest that, in the writing of Arab American feminists and among other women of color, self...