Like all people, we perceive the version of reality that our culture communicates. Like others having or living in more than one culture, we get multiple, often opposing messages. The coming together of two self-consistent but habitually incomparable frames of reference causes un choque, a cultural collision.
Interpretation
The quote discusses how cultural backgrounds shape our perception of reality, leading to conflicts when different cultures collide.
Gloria E. Anzaldua reflects on the influence of culture in shaping our understanding of reality. When individuals are exposed to multiple cultural perspectives, they may receive conflicting messages that challenge their usual way of thinking. This cultural intersection can lead to a 'cultural collision' or 'choque', where two distinct frames of reference meet, highlighting the complexities of identity and perception shaped by diverse cultural experiences.
In practice
In a multicultural training session, this quote can illustrate the impact of diverse cultural backgrounds on individual perspectives.
We cannot educate white women and take them by the hand. Most of us are willing to help but we can't do the white woman's homework for her. That's an energy drain. More times than she cares to remember, Nellie Wong, Asian American feminist writer, has been called by white women wanting a list of Asian American women who can give readings or workshops. We are in danger of being reduced to purveyors of resource lists.
The struggle is inner: Chicano, indio, American Indian, mojado, mexicano, immigrant Latino, Anglo in power, working class Anglo, Black, Asian--our psyches resemble the bordertowns and are populated by the same people. The struggle has always been inner, and is played out in outer terrains. Awareness of our situation must come before inner changes, which in turn come before changes in society. Nothing happens in the "real" world unless it first happens in the images in our heads.
I am visible-see this Indian face-yet I am invisible. I both blind them with my beak nose and am their blind spot. But I exist, we exist. They'd like to think I have melted in the pot. But I haven't. We haven't.
Nobody’s going to save you. No one’s going to cut you down, cut the thorns thick around you. No one’s going to storm the castle walls nor kiss awake your birth, climb down your hair, nor mount you onto the white steed. There is no one who will feed the yearning. Face it. You will have to do, do it yourself.
We are taught that the body is an ignorant animal intelligence dwells only in the head. But the body is smart. It does not discern between external stimuli and stimuli from the imagination. It reacts equally viscerally to events from the imagination as it does to real events.
Yes, in my life, since we must call it so, there were three things, the inability to speak, the inability to be silent, and solitude, that’s what I’ve had to make the best of.
I say, let us think. Let each one express his thought. Let us become investigators, not followers, not cringers and crawlers. If there is in Heaven an infinite being, he never will be satisfied with the worship of cowards and hypocrites.
If a man's at odds to know his own mind it's because he hasn't got aught but his mind to know it with.
We have all, at one time or another, been performers, and many of us still are - politicians, playboys, cardinals and kings.
Love for one's country is part of faith.
The first virtue of all really great men is that they are sincere. They eradicate hypocrisy from their hearts.
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