Shapeshifting Subjects: Gloria Anzaldúa's Naguala and Border Arte by Kelli D. Zaytoun (review)

Reviewed by: Shapeshifting Subjects: Gloria Anzaldúa's Naguala and Border Arte by Kelli D. Zaytoun John-Michael Howell Warner Zaytoun, Kelli D. Shapeshifting Subjects: Gloria Anzaldúa's Naguala and Border Arte. U of Illinois P, 2022. 172 pp. Shapeshifting Subjects: Gloria Anzaldúa's Naguala and Border Arte (U of Illinois P, 2022) is an important read both for the Anzaldúa scholar and activists alike. It is the latest Anzaldúa publication by Kelli Zaytoun, Professor of English Language and Literatures at Wright State University, and adds enormous scope and depth to a career analyzing and theorizing naguala, or shapeshifter. As a book on shapeshifting subjectivity, it adds great depth to her earlier works, including A Case for the Self-in-Coalition: Exploring Anzaldúa's Legacy of La Naguala with Lugones' Complex Communication (2013), and Resistance as Shapeshifter: A Posthumanist Reading of Subjectivity and Death in the Fiction of Gloria Anzaldúa and Clarice Lispector (2016). Shapeshifting Subjects inspired me to revisit Zaytoun's earlier publications. Due to the interdisciplinarity of Anzaldúa Studies—bridging the arts, humanities, and social sciences—different audiences will emphasize some ideas more than others. As seen in the book title, la naguala is a reference directly from Anzaldúa and an inclusive pre-Columbian Nahua notion of metaphysics. As a theory of radical selfhood, Zaytoun propose nagualismo studies in order to emphasize women of color subjectivities. Shapeshifting Subjects was particularly illuminating for me as a border studies scholar, not only because of the discussion of theories of embodiment and the everyday, but also her metaphorical analysis of peripheries and inbetween spaces. Shapeshifting Subjects is organized into four chapters, plus an introduction and conclusion. From unpacking Azaldúa's theories of la naguala, to visual and performing artists and writers, arguments for feminist coalitional organizing, and wisdom for healing from everyday trauma, the chapters lay the groundwork and intent for the book early on. Although I thoroughly enjoyed reading the book cover to cover, the four chapters standalone and can be read individually (or assigned in the classroom). I was partial to the two following chapters, and am thinking about ways I might use them in my own research and teaching. In the second chapter, "An Artist in the Sense of a Shaman: Border Arte as Decolonial Practice," Zaytoun deconstructs Anzaldúa's articulation of border arte. Zaytoun writes, "La naguala, therefore, was a practice of consciousness and art form [End Page 676] that connected Anzaldúa to her surroundings but also to el cenote, a well of images, informed by her familiar and cultural heritage" (59). She goes on to describe a metaphorical space, rather than representational, and posits border art as a constant, lived negotiation. To address US-Mexico border art as performative, familial, and cultural, Zaytoun writes, "the artist does not preserve a culture but creates one anew for the moment in which the artist lives" (54). Although border arte is based on a model of mestiza embodiment, the shapeshifter framework allows for an analysis of museums and galleries, for example, in la frontera. Whether a public act, creative writing, or physical and material, the permutations of border arte are for women of color and queer women of color to survive and grow. In the third chapter, "Connections with Arab American Feminism," Zaytoun again shows the importance and significance of Anzaldúa's ideas as solidarity-based and coalitional, as well as cultural and familial. The author makes enormous strides theorizing collaborative organizing and activism, both in academic and non-academic worlds. Drawing heavily from my interest in border studies, I cannot help but think about the importance of Anzaldúan border arte methodologies in the context of Arab-American and Arab-Canadian feminisms. Throughout the chapter, Zatoun uses an inviting and inclusive language that allows not only for this transcultural bridge between Chicanx and North American Arab feminisms, but also encourages us to ponder multiple women of color subjectivities in the context of Anzaldúan, feminist shapeshifting. This book is an incredibly rich and generous reading of Anzaldúa, as well as a careful reading of generations of Anzaldúa discourse and practice. Although I have focused...

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