Opium of the Masses: Religious Representation in Gloria Anzaldúa’s poem, “A Sea of Cabbages,” from Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza

Authors

  • Layla Benitez-James

Abstract

The panel’s first presenter with explore Gloria Anzaldúa’s rebellious, much-contested Borderlands/La Frontera, an incredibly multi-faceted work the Chican@ movement has had to reexamine again and again due to its extremely unconventional mixture of poetry and prose, memoir and fiction, English, Spanish, and Nahuatl (an Aztec language). Borderlands/ La Frontera, as Anzalda’s most revolutionary work, presents a deeply holistic understanding of border reality from Anzaldúa’s unapologetically personal point of view. It looks specifically at one poem, “A Sea of Cabbages,” to explore the relationship between religion and class.  

Author Biography

Layla Benitez-James

Layla Benitez-James is an MFA candidate in Poetry in the University of Houston's Creative Writing Program. 

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Published

2012-05-17