"Adjectives are a way of constraining and controlling. 'The more adjectives you have the tighter the box.' The adjective before writer [ex: feminist writer, lesbian writer] marks, for us, the 'inferior' writer, that is, the writer who doesn't write like them [the dominant culture]" (Anzaldua 264). Adjectives are labels, and in Gloria Anzaldua's article "To(o) Queer the Writer--Loca, escritora y chicana," she discusses, among other things, some of the implications of using labels.
As I have advocated before, I do not like labels, and I avoid using them for myself at all cost. But often, we are faced with situations where we are forced to use them to define ourselves. I could say that I am an Appalachian woman (said correctly), or what some would consider a hillbilly. And I would wear that identity proudly, but as Anzaldua notes, that would place me in a box, and a quite tight fitting box as well.
So if I didn't like that label, I could say that I am a feminist, or a lesbian, or a rhetorician (I'm NOT a speller), or a middle-class white woman, or, or, or. As you can see, the list could go on and on forever. To chose any ONE of those labels and say this is me, would be to deny those other parts that are just as important and just as vital to who I am as any other label. I would, in essence, be dividing and splitting my identity: who I really am.
Anzaldua drives this point home when she argues so eloquently that "identity is not a bunch of little cubbyholes stuffed respectively with intellect, race, sex, class, vocation, gender. Identity flows between over, aspects of a person. Identity is a river--a process. Contained within the river is its identity, and it needs to flow, to change, to stay a river--if it stopped it would be a contained body of water such as a lake or a pond" (267). I wonder what my first-year composition students would think of this quote. The 18 years-old students who felt that by the time you enter college your identity should be pretty much set!
Anzaldua discusses more than just labels and identity with in this article, which is apparently an excerpt from a larger piece, but it is her comments about identity that resonate the most with me. Is there such a thing as a lesbian writer, or a queer one for that matter? I don't know, but I do not wish to cling to just one small part of my identity and be labeled that way.
As I have advocated before, I do not like labels, and I avoid using them for myself at all cost. But often, we are faced with situations where we are forced to use them to define ourselves. I could say that I am an Appalachian woman (said correctly), or what some would consider a hillbilly. And I would wear that identity proudly, but as Anzaldua notes, that would place me in a box, and a quite tight fitting box as well.
So if I didn't like that label, I could say that I am a feminist, or a lesbian, or a rhetorician (I'm NOT a speller), or a middle-class white woman, or, or, or. As you can see, the list could go on and on forever. To chose any ONE of those labels and say this is me, would be to deny those other parts that are just as important and just as vital to who I am as any other label. I would, in essence, be dividing and splitting my identity: who I really am.
Anzaldua drives this point home when she argues so eloquently that "identity is not a bunch of little cubbyholes stuffed respectively with intellect, race, sex, class, vocation, gender. Identity flows between over, aspects of a person. Identity is a river--a process. Contained within the river is its identity, and it needs to flow, to change, to stay a river--if it stopped it would be a contained body of water such as a lake or a pond" (267). I wonder what my first-year composition students would think of this quote. The 18 years-old students who felt that by the time you enter college your identity should be pretty much set!
Anzaldua discusses more than just labels and identity with in this article, which is apparently an excerpt from a larger piece, but it is her comments about identity that resonate the most with me. Is there such a thing as a lesbian writer, or a queer one for that matter? I don't know, but I do not wish to cling to just one small part of my identity and be labeled that way.
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