Borders are set up to define the places that are safe and unsafe, to distinguish us from them . A border is a dividing line, a narrow strip along a steep edge. A borderland is a vague and undetermined place created by the emotional residue of an unnatural boundary. It is in a constant state of transition. The prohibited and forbidden are its inhabitants. Los attravesados live here: the squint-eyed, the perverse, the queer, the troublesome, the mongrel, the mulatto, the half-breed, the half-dead; in short, those who cross over, pass over, or go through the confines of the 'normal'. (Anzalda 1987) Then I came to realize that men build themselves personalities as they build houses - to protect themselves from the world. But once they have built a house, they are forced to live in it. They become its prisoners. (Wilson 1956)