Framing Eduardo C. Corral’s Slow Lightning Within Anzaldúa’s Path of Conocimiento

Gloria Anzaldúa, in her essay titled, “now let us shift…the path of conocimiento…inner work, public acts,” refers to socially constructed identity as a “cage you reinforce and double-lock yourself into” yet in reality, it is “a mental construction, fabrication” that can (and should) be broken and recomposed (Anzaldúa 558). In looking at Eduardo Corral’s book and collection of poems, Slow Lightning, through this lens, it is interesting to note the manner in which Corral frames the text. He opens the book with a poem titled, “Our Completion: Oil on Wood: Tino Rodríguez: 1999,” in which he presents direct references to the Aztec deity of rain, “Tlaloc.”¹ The first words of the book and of this poem are “Before nourishment there must be obedience,” which implies a form of offering to a higher power or authority—in this case, it is likely to the god of rain (Corral 3). Similarly, Anzaldúa begins her essay with a sentiment expressing that a deep connection with nature and the spiritual realm often opens the senses to heightened consciousness. She explains that “this knowledge, urges you to cast una ofrenda of images and words across the page” (Anzaldúa 540). It is this offering, this connection to a spiritual consciousness that enables the redemption of difficult experiences, the transformation of hardships into beauty, the transformation of the self into a new, fulfilled identity—themes which we can perceive in the content of Corral’s internal poems. Completing this external frame, Corral ends the book with the poem titled, “Monologue of a Vulture’s Shadow,” in which he expresses “I long to return to my master,” and remembers the freedom and bliss of being wholly connected to his true self (Corral 73). Throughout her essay, Anzaldúa refers to the “unwanted aspects of the self” as “shadow-beasts” which guard the threshold of change, retaining the individual in a trapped state of desconocimiento, or disconnectedness from reality (Anzaldúa 553). She explains that “admitting your darker aspects allows you to break out of your self-imposed prison,” finding freedom in the identity and reality that was meant for you all along (553). It is perhaps this very monologue, the conclusion of Corral’s collection, that depicts the necessary act of confronting one’s shadow in order to break free from the cage of socially constructed identity, and obtain the freedom to see the world with new eyes, a new reality, and a newly reconstructed identity that had always been there, hidden deep within, waiting to break out and join its master, its true self, in the swirling sky-ward winds once more.

3 March 2020

1. See “Tlaloc: Aztec God.” Encyclopædia Brittanica. Edited by Adam Augustyn et al., https://www.britannica.com/topic/Tlaloc. ↩︎

Works Cited:

Anzaldúa, Gloria E. “now let us shift…the path of conocimiento…inner work, public acts.” This Bridge We Call Home. Edited by Gloria E. Anzaldúa and Analouise Keating, pp. 540-578, Routledge, New York, 2002.

Corral, Eduardo C. Slow Lightning. Yale University Press, New Haven, 2012.