Mary Louise Pratt defined contact zones as “social spaces where cultures meet, clash, and grapple with each other, often in contexts of highly asymmetrical relations of power, such as colonialism, slavery, or their aftermaths as they are lived out in many parts of the world today.” A contact zone is a place where two cultures can mesh together. People from different cultures are able to interact with each other through these contact zones. A contact zone allows people to look into cultures other than their own. They can get new ideas by looking into another culture, as well as their own. Contact zones allow you to look at things in a new way. Pratt talks about contact zones being seen more and more today. People may have to look beyond how they think of something so that it can be understood by someone who thinks about the same thing in a different way.
Pratt defines an autoethnographic text as “a text in which people undertake to describe themselves in ways that engage with representations others have made of them.” Guaman Poma’s New Chronicle is an autoethnographic text because it is mixed Andean with the Spanish culture. Pratt said, “autoethnographic works are often addressed to both metropolitan audiences and the speaker’s own community.” They are merged together so that both groups can understand. You can change something around so that it is said in a way that other people can understand it. You can describe yourself in a way that other people would describe you. You might have to think about and change what you are trying to say so that it can also be understood by someone else. You can learn by putting together what you both know.
The word transculturation is used to “describe processes whereby members of subordinated or marginal groups select and invent from materials transmitted by a dominant or metropolitan culture. Guaman Poma’s letter used