Gloria Anzaldúa was a Chicana poet and writer who grew up in the Valley of Texas, born less that 25 miles from the border between the United States and Mexico (Borderlands 3). As such, Anzaldúa offers a unique perspective on what it means to be in nepantla, or in-between (Cantu). Seeing herself as both Mexican and American1 while being accepted by neither culture, Anzaldúa’s writing portrays the pain that those who live on the hyphen feel. The border, to her, represents an unnatural and painful separation between her two identities, Anzaldúa describing it as “una herida abierta” where her two cultures grate against each other (Borderlands 3). To be mestiza, to Anzaldúa, means to live in a “third space between cultures and social systems,” subject
