SOURCE: Concannon, Kevin. “The Contemporary Space of the Border: Gloria Anzaldúa's Borderlands and William Gibson's Neuromancer.” Textual Practice 12, no. 3 (winter 1998): 429-42.

In the following essay, Concannon discusses the thematic motif of the border and how it relates to self-identity in Neuromancer and Gloria Anzaldúa's Borderlands/La Frontera.

I

When Charles Edwards and a female passenger stopped at a Barstow gas station on a late September day in 1992, little did they know that two hours later they would be just north of Burbank, almost 122 miles from Barstow, and far from alone. In fact, as they sped along the California freeways, they were being followed by at least seven police cars and four helicopters, numerous television and radio trucks, countless spectators, and an even larger television and radio audience, who watched and listened as the spectacle unfolded.

According to news reports, Edwards had kidnapped his female passenger in...