Anzaldúa’s book is built around the symbol of the US-Mexico borderland as both an unnatural and violent boundary and an in-between space where cultures and languages meet. Anzaldúa characterizes the borderland as an “open wound” and “thin edge of barbwire” (24-25), where water and land meet. Symbolically, the borderland thus stands in for liminality of all kinds, including the space between the inner and external worlds. It is also a psychic space that Anzaldúa is consistently traversing as a queer feminist Chicana woman; she positions Contradiction as Mestiza Consciousness throughout the work. She even describes the borderland as the space from which writers and artists create. It is the home she is always searching for, a space neglected by national governments and yet highly regulated by the Border Patrol and highly capitalized on by multinational corporations. It is a paradoxical space caught between, always in flux.

Anzaldúa first presents the serpent as the embodiment of darkness, as the thing she most fears. However, as she unpacks the history of Coatlicue, the goddess with the serpent skirt, the serpent’s sinister nature becomes the embodiment of healing. The darkness of the serpent is redefined to be something empowering, linked to divine feminine energy and power within oneself.