Un/Citizen in the Making: An Archival Review of Gloria Anzaldúa's "Her Name Never Got Called"

Gloria Evangelina Anzaldúa (1942-2004) influenced Latina/o Studies through several touchtone writings such as Borderlands/La Frontera, This Bridge Called My Back, and Interviews/Entrevistas, among several published works.... [ view full abstract ]

Gloria Evangelina Anzaldúa (1942-2004) influenced Latina/o Studies through several touchtone writings such as Borderlands/La Frontera, This Bridge Called My Back, and Interviews/Entrevistas, among several published works. Since her passing in 2004, Anzaldúan scholarship has continued to grow as evidenced by the inception of the Society for the Study of Gloria Anzaldúa and numerous publications springing from her life, such as The Gloria Anzaldúa Reader and Bridging: How Gloria Anzaldúa’s Life and Work Transformed Our Own. Therefore, it is important to examine how Anzaldúa’s scholarship has helped carve out a space of scholarly discourse in Latina/o Studies and continues to do so in various academic disciplines such as Chicana/o Studies, rhetoric, and communication studies.

To that end, this paper aims to discuss some of Anzaldúa’s “un-disciplined” conversations found her archive at the Nettie Lee Benson Latin American Collection at The University of Texas, at Austin. Having not yet undergone the formal editing and publication process, this paper defines undisciplined writing and thinking through Anzaldúa’s unpublished work. Moreover, various drafts and notes from colleagues also become part of the story. Building on theories of citizenship and belonging, this paper argues that Anzaldúa’s theories on citizenship may be discerned through a fictional story “Her Name Never Got Called,” which is located in the “Written Works” section of her archival collection. Although never published, Anzaldúa has several drafts of this fictional story showcasing her revision process and thought. Thus, by conducting a close textual analysis of the story and the edits on the margins of each draft, this paper uncovers how a little girl’s experience on her first day of school relates to past, present, and ongoing conversations on citizenship and Anzaldúan scholarship. As a part of this analysis, this paper uses Hector Amaya’s (2013) work on citizenship excess—through “references [to the] endemic political inequality” and as a “theoretical framework to explain why 160 years after joining the Union [Latina/os] continue to be unwelcome” (p. 19)—to explore ethical dimensions of citizenship as they relate to an experience that some may undergo as part of a right of passage, a child’s first day of school.