Curative and new mestiza language in Gloria Anzaldua's 'La Curandera'

This study analyzes how the language in Gloria Anzaldúa's poem "La Curandera" creates internal textual cohesion as well as coherence to her new mestiza philosophy. Scripts, conversational exchanges, and lexical items in "La Curandera" suggest a causal relationship between blindness and silence and sickness and death. The characters that project their voices and possess insight resist the "white leg" that plagues them. Furthermore, the language associated with the poem's narrator suggests her power and influence. The scripts and lexical items in the poem also anaphorically reference Anzaldúa's new mestiza philosophy outlined at the beginning of her poetry collection. The scripts relating to the "white leg" illness inflicting the characters, the Border Patrol, and the big quelite represent oppressive entities for which Anzaldúa, the writer/healer, suggests cures. Lexical items in the poem that constitute the healer's curative rituals parallel Anzaldúa's writing process, and the cultural subscripts invoked teach Anzaldúa's philosophy.