Melissa W. Wright

Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza, opened my eyes to the powerful connections linking culture, economy, and geography in the making of places and social communities. Anzaldúa's graceful and bilingual combination of poetry and prose, and of feminism and critical race theory, sparked my desire to turn a place so central to my childhood, the Mexico-U.S. border, into the place central to my research and scholarly concerns. Her book not only catalyzed my own interests but also provided inspiration for a new generation of productive collaborations across academic fields and methodological approaches for understanding the intimacy binding place to identity, and economy to culture.