Bodies, borders, and letters: Gloria Anzaldúa's “Speaking in tongues: A letter to 3rd world women writers”

Abstract

Anzaldúa argues that all writing should be connected and personalized like letters. Both the content and the form of Anzaldúa's letter make it a text worthy of attention as well as a text suitable for challenging Euro‐Americans to rethink their approach to texts by people of color. This paper argues that a letter is a distinct rhetorical form that enables an author to suspend the non‐addressed audience in an a‐critical position, and that an alternative approach to rhetoric is to understand communication as embodied.