Gloria Anzaldua Assimilation

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Assimilation... assimilation is a word that I can personally connect to. Imagine moving to another city, town, or state. That’s hard to do right? It is unimaginably hard leaving everything behind. Now, imagine moving to another country where you don’t know their people, language, or traditions. You just know that you’re moving to find a “better” life. That’s what happened to me. Something similar happened to Gloria Anzaldua as she reveals in her essay, “How to Tame a Wild Tongue,” she talks about how hard was to get rid of her accent and why she felt the need to. Through the use of anecdotes, allusions, and interjections of spanish. With the mention of that, Anzaldua persuades her fundamental idea of showing the strong relationship between language and identity, and that our language must be preserved and celebrated in order to appreciate, and have pride in, ourselves.

Through her essay, Anzaldua uses diverse rhetorical analysis, in particular she uses anecdotes. The author writes, “If you want to be American, speak ‘American.’ If you don’t like it, go back to Mexico where you belong.” when she introduces a flashback when she was sent …show more content…

She introduces quotes from different people and mexican sayings. She mentions “Who is to say that robbing a people of its language is less violent than war” making reference to the artist Ray Gwyn Smith. The introduction of this quote makes her essay more thoughtful. Another important allusion she uses is when she says “Neither eagle nor serpent, but both”, Anzaldua mentions this because of the distinguish and discrimination between mexicans from mexico and mexicans from USA. Her allusion describes the decision about being an “eagle” that refers to the American flag or a “serpent” referring to the Mexican flag. She shows the hard decision that your own people brings you to do. Her beliefs and strengths give her the power to say that she’s both. Mexicana y