Monstrous Borders and the Border as Monster
Nocturno mexicano; Daniele Crepaldi (b. 1953 Italy); 2017; Oaxaca, México; Chronomat; 101x200cm; The Mexican Museum in Association with the Smithsonian Institute; “Endemismo: Arte contemporáneo y la biosfera de Oaxaca” exhibition; Image from mexicanmuseum.org.
What is a border? Some perceive it geographically, marked by natural landmarks or military posts separating one nation from another (Popescu, 2011; Yuval-Davis et al., 2019; Turner, 2020). Others define borders theoretically as a third space where differences intersect (Anzaldúa, 1987; Sandoval 1997; Mignolo, 2000). As this journal demonstrates, the more diverse forms of borders we uncover, the more avenues we find for (re)evaluating politics, the environment, and the human experience. In this essay, I explore the transformation of the border from an abstract concept to a physical monster in Sonia Guiñansaca’s poetry. As a queer migrant poet and activist, Guiñansaca combines their intersectional activism with their lived experience in their poetry. For instance, in Nostalgia & Borders (2016) Guiñansaca draws from their own personal history to voice experiences of migration and loss. This “artivism” (Sandoval and Latorre, 2008) confronts the struggles of marginalized communities and fosters solidarity. Guiñansaca has been featured in numerous media outlets, including PEN America and NBC News, and there is a burgeoning scholarly interest in their provocative poetry (Pérez, 2018; Urquijo-Ruiz, 2019; Zecena, 2021).
This paper examines Guiñansaca’s “The Monster Is Real,” a single stanza poem composed of nine lines in free verse. I read the titular monster as the border and in doing so, offer an approach to borders that counters dominant anthropocentric perspectives and considers the border as a complex entity within itself.
The poem symbolizes the multifaceted forms of the border and ultimately defines it as a sinister monster. Historically, migrants have been referred to derogatorily as “monsters,” or depicted as such in literature and media, for their hybrid existence between languages, cultures, and locations (Rodríguez, 2007; Ramírez Berg, 2012; Moraña, 2017; López-Calvo, 2021). This poem instead applies the monster signifier to the border. The migrant is humanized in the figure of the abuelito; it is the border that is “othered.” Othering, understood as the “human ontology of distance and opposition” (Giuliani, 2021), is applied here to a non-human entity. This radical move unites the migrant and non-migrant by making the “monster,” i.e., the embodiment of difference, the border itself. It gives rise to the paradoxical representation of the border which, I argue, underscores its elusive nature.
The poem initially presents two understandings of borders, that of the real and the imagined: “I am told that borders are imaginary / As a way to offer me consolation / But they have not seen the monstrosity that has been built” (vv. 1-3). Borders that are imaginary are viewed as such by those who lack a personal encounter with borders and can only view them as an abstract, imagined concept. This perspective is emblematic of “thinking about borders” that Walter Mignolo distinguishes from “border thinking” or “border gnosis”; the former being based on a territorial epistemology while the latter emerges from dwelling within the border (Mignolo, 2000). The passive voice creates a sense of distancing that renders the imagined border remote and intangible. It simultaneously situates the speaker and abuelito’s positionality as that of border gnosis, which is further emphasized by the switch to active voice starting in the fourth verse: “My abuelito crossed a real river, almost died in a real desert, and / climbed a real wall” (vv. 4-5). This shift contrasts the conceptual border with the physical border that the narrator’s abuelito encountered. The active verbs “crossed,” “died,” and “climbed” give movement not only to the abuelito who is performing the action, but also to the border upon which the action is being done. The border is something that can be climbed and crossed. It is a physical entity that can inflict death.
This movement and action, embedded in the poem’s grammar and in the repetition of the word “real,” brings the border out from the imagined, passive world to the land of the living. The border is a river, a desert, and a wall. These metaphors give the border concrete forms while highlighting its mutability. Yet the border’s change and movement only serve to prevent that of the migrant. Jeffrey Jerome Cohen’s fifth thesis from the seminal text Monster Theory: Reading Culture (1996) states the monster prevents mobility by restricting space and attacking those who cross its borders (p. 12). Guiñansaca’s border is the definition of this exact monster. It comes to life “At night, somewhere between Mexico and the U.S.” as though lurking and waiting to pounce under the cover of darkness (v. 6). The verse continues with “you can hear it” which marks the beginning of the border’s physical transformation into a creature that can create sound. The following verse, “breathing,” connotes the living aspect of the border/monster hybrid. The word is emphasized structurally as it is the only verse that consists of just a single word, and the absence of other words highlights the profundity of the breathing.
The border’s personification is animated further in the penultimate verse: “You can hear it eating” (v. 8). There is greater emphasis on “eating” since it appears at the end of the verse, and the lack of punctuation and abruptness implies the verse is another enjambment, yet it does not continue. The reader is left hanging on the intransitive verb “eating,” which begs the question: What is the border eating? Given the border’s monstrous transformation, I interpret the abuelito almost dying as him being hunted and nearly eaten by this monstrous border. The intransitivity of “eating” indirectly makes it synonymous with “killing” within the larger context of the poem. The monster eats migrants, the border kills migrants. The act of eating sustains life and provides the consumer with nutrients to grow. The monster feeds off migrants, implying that with each death, it is fortified.
In the final verse, the border’s monstrous transformation is complete as the poem affirms: “The monster is real” (v. 9). Earlier, the poem had established that the border is a monstrosity (v. 3) and that the border is real (vv. 4-5). These separate elements contributed to the poem’s depiction of the border by initiating its monstrous transformation. The last verse, then, brings these two ideas together and yields a border that is a hybrid monster. Although throughout the poem the border has gone through a process of othering, it is not the “other” in Levinas’ sense of an unknowable difference (Levinas, 1998). The narrator and their abuelito know the border quite intimately, and it is this knowledge that makes the border a monster as opposed to an “other.” Ironically, monsters are typically imagined creatures. Juxtaposing the material border with an immaterial monster demonstrates that the border can be both real and imaginary.
“The monster is real” contrasts with the poem’s opening verse when the narrator was told that “borders are imaginary.” The parallel between the first and last verses demonstrates a mestiza consciousness, where multiple identities exist (Anzaldúa, 1987). By embracing the border’s fluidity and multiplicity, the poem challenges dominant perceptions of the border. It is more than just an imagined concept; the border is also made of the barriers and beasts that inflict trauma, death, and separation. Reading the border as a monster who breathes and eats resists the anthropocentrism in contemporary border discourse. It shifts focus onto the border itself and acknowledges more-than-human agency (Bennett, 2010). In doing so, the role of the land and its relationship to the biopolitics of immigration can be reevaluated. Notably, the third verse reveals that the border is a “monstrosity” that was constructed. Perhaps, then, the true monster is not the border but rather those who delineate it in the first place.
About the Author
Elmira Louie is a PhD Candidate and an Associate Instructor in the Department of Comparative Literature at the University of California, Davis (UC Davis). Her research is on world-systems borderlands within modern Persian and Turkish literature. She is interested in theories of gender, decolonialism, migration and diaspora studies, translation, and world literature. She is the translator of the book Espejo de los detalles / Mirror of Details, which was published in 2020. She has produced several digital humanities podcasts, including most recently The Story of Iran and Dialogic. Additionally, she serves on the Vice Chancellor’s Advising for Equity Administrative Advisory Committee, where she works to reshape and transform advising structures across the UC Davis campus.
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