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How To Tame A Wild Tongue

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We develop and integrate things differently. As humans, we learn different characteristics about ourselves, like our favorite things to do and our values. These values we hold close to our hearts can represent us as we identify with them. These values can range from interest to cultural representation and fun facts about ourselves. Cultural representation is one of the main focuses our society chooses to identify as. Gloria Anzaldua, the Autohistoria developer and writer of “How to Tame a Wild Tongue '' exposes the differences between the cultural impact Chicanos and immigrants face living in America. Gloria Anzaldua uses her essays to gain the power of our own culture, language, and identity to be our beautiful selves. Having different cultures …show more content…

fixedBorderlands La Frontera The New Mestiza '' looks into Chicano culture and the hardships they face. It illustrates to its audience the variations between culture, gender, and identity through the idea of having a border between each culture in America. Chicanos have constantly faced oppression for their nationality due to their values and ways of representing themselves. In “How to Tame a Wild Tongue” Gloria Anzaldua uses her experience as a teacher teaching Chicanos and her childhood stories about growing up feeling ashamed of her own language and identity to help immigrants and Chicano cultures decolonization their language and understand the importance of their language, power, and representation surrounding …show more content…

Anzaldua expresses how being a woman in a Chicano/male-dominated community causes a sense of the disappearance of women. “In my culture, they are all words that are derogatory if applied to women- I've never heard them applied to me(Anzaldua pg35)”. Anzaldua spent her childhood hearing others call women terms that never truly applied to men. Chicano cultures continuously disrespect women whenever they do something. They treat the women in their lives horribly and cause women to feel powerless. In the interview with Gloria Anzaldua conducted by Andrea Lunsford, Anzaldua tells us the reasoning behind her activism history and where it stemmed from. Anzaldua describes how seeing the degradation of women and that pain led to her wanting to write and work for change. “This is not the way things are supposed to be. Girls' children are not supposed to be treated this way. Women are not supposed to be battered; they're not supposed to be second-class citizens. Chicanos shouldn't be treated in this way in society(Lunsford pg 276)”. Gloria Anzaldua's childhood consisted of girls being called sexist terms affecting the ways she’ll grow up. She was able to see the different ways men and women were treated while growing up causing her to want to see a change. The degradation of women socially and internally through Chicano cultures causes Anzaldua to want women in her culture to

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Rhetorical Analysis on Anzaldua’s How to Tame a Wild Tongue The passage How to Tame a Wild Tongue is a very defensive and straightforward argumentative essay which defends her language and the people who speak it against the discrimination that the author herself has experienced first hand (Ethos). From this text we can infer that the author is most likely from hispanic descent as she is speaking spanish a lot of the time throughout the text. This text mainly speaks about the discrimination many Mexican-Americans suffer because they are spanish speaking.

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Bobrow-Strain deftly highlights the structural inequities that prevent Latinx people from moving ahead in society. The author emphasizes the enormous discrepancies encountered by Latinx communities and provides attention to the structural constraints they meet via Aida's experiences, such as her mother's low-wage employment and her own restricted access to decent education The growth of Aida's character serves as an example of the tenacity and power typical of Latino cultural settings. Aida refuses to let her surroundings alone define who she is despite the difficulties she endures. Her pursuit of education and her participation in activism to bring about change in her community demonstrate her drive to overcome her circumstances.

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Gloria Anzaldúa, in the essay “How to Tame a Wild Tongue” (1987), claims her experiences as a Chicano taught her that her culture was not looked at highly in comparison to the English language. Anzaldúa argues her view about her Chicano language by giving examples of both cultures Chicano Mexican and American cultures. Anzaldúa’s purpose is to inform her audience on how it is to grow up in a Chicano speaking family. Anzaldúa writes in a frustrating tone throughout the story of her life experiences. Thesis: Anzaldúa use of her personal experiences, and Music, Film and Literature are relevant sufficient and

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Furthermore, it explores the cultural hybridity of the Chicanos and the need to create a new uniting identity (Anzaldúa 77-83). The book

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She then states her mother’s difficulty to “criticize the sexist behavior she sees there” (25). In a way, Diaz understands her mother’s conflict as her mother was raised with different ideologies where women are expected to subjugate to their spouse. She believes that overcoming“the oppression of women in any domestic sphere” will contribute to the Mujerista movement. However, she also recognizes that “those of us as mujeristas criticize sexism in the Hispanic culture are often belittled and accused of selling out to the Euro-American women, but Euro-American feminists call into question our integrity and praxis as mujerista feminist when we are not willing to criticize” (26). With this in mind, we can see the constant fight a Hispanic women must face in the feminist

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Selena Quintanilla’s father once said, “We have to be more Mexican than the Mexicans and more American than the Americans.” In today’s society, many have encountered the challenge of not being able to be who they really are because they fear not being accepted by others, more specifically their culture. But, what happens when an individual is part of two worlds that have just as many rules? Gloria E. Anzaldúa was a Mexican-American writer and poet who made a major contribution to the fields of cultural, feminist, and queer theory. Anzaldúa identifies as a Chicana and speaks different variations of Spanish, some of which she exhibits in her works.

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Not only did these Chicanas fight for their reproductive rights, but they also wanted the freedom to have a life outside of being a caretaker. New Voice of La Raza: Chicanas Speak Out (1971) states, “The resolutions also called for ‘24-hour child-care centers in Chicano communities’ and explained that there is a critical need for these since ‘Chicana motherhood should not preclude educational, political, social and economic advancement.’” This same idea has been brought up in consciousness-raising; women shouldn’t revolve around men but instead should live the lives they want. Through Women’s Eyes: An American History With Documents states, “Ultimately, consciousness-raising rested on the conviction that ‘the personal is political,’ that the massive power inequities from which women suffered could be found in the tiniest details of daily existence.”

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“How to Tame a Wild Tongue” is a chapter five from the book titled Borderlands La Frontera, written by Gloria Anzaldua. In this chapter, Gloria told us how she struggled about speaking in English and her Chicano immigration life as a Hispanic living in the United States. Firstly, she discussed how the gender and cultural impacted of the language. Next, she also discussed how the Spanish language changed and evolved. At the end, Gloria also told us how the language in terms of learning that is comes together in one.

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Gloria Anzaldua depicts in her book “Borderlands La Frontera” the injustices women face on the U.S.-Mexican border. While, Mayeli Blackwell describes the discrimination of race, class and gender women experience in educational institutions. In addition, women also struggled over gender and sexuality within the Chicano movement. The Chicano Movement during the 1960 and 1970’s was initiated due to the many issues and challenges (farmworkers struggles, the ins and outs of political organizing, the right to quality education) the Chicana/os faced. Issues that were in dire need of a solution, where many Chicana/os participated in the movements to protest and advocate for social change.

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Furthermore, he describes the multiple forms of control Chicana women face when he states, “The Chicana is first of all oppressed economically, socially, and politically by virtue of her being a woman. Secondly, the Chicana as a member of an oppressed ethnic and/ or racial group is limited to the same extent as the Chicano by the dominant Anglo society” (50). However, he fails to mention the experiences of queer women, which implies how the Chicano

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Chicanas in in America faces difficulties when seeking their identity. Although Chicanas/o find it difficult to balance two cultures, they feel isolated doing so. In the story, Lorenza Calvillo questions about “who am I?” “how do I see myself?” and “how am I seen by others?”

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“The common denominator all Latinos have is that we want some respect. That 's what we 're all fighting for” - Cristina Saralegui. Judith Ortiz Cofer published the article, “The Myth of the Latin Woman,” where she expresses her anger towards stereotypes, inequality, and degradation of Latin Americans. Cofer explains the origins of these perceived views and proceeds to empower Latin American women to champion over them. Cofer establishes her credibility as a Latin American woman with personal anecdotes that emphasize her frustration of the unfair depiction of Latinos in society.

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Garcia references Consuelo Nieto beautifully summing up Chicana feminism separate from the mainstream culture explaining, “The Chicana must demand that dignity and respect within the women’s rights movement which allows her to practice feminism within the context of her own culture… Her approaches to feminism must be drawn from her own world” (232). Martha Cotera spoke very much on the subject of race, sex, and class in her most famous book The Chicana Feminist. She dedicated the last section of this book to explain the ways in which Chicana feminism is separate from white feminism and how and why class plays a major aspect in that difference. Today, Chicanas are still working hard on issues directly affecting the Chican@ community such as high school drop outs, healthcare, bilingual education, and immigration reform to help Chican@s gain visibility as a whole group that remains constrained and

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In “How to Tame a Wild Tongue,” Gloria Anzaldua argues for the permission to define her own Chicano/ Feminist voice without being hindered by stereotypes and limitations. Gloria argues that, “wild tongues can’t be tamed, they can only be cut out,” but specifically argues that different accents stir up one big culture. She says “We oppress each other trying to oust Chicano each other, tying to be the “real” Chicanas, to speak like Chicanos.” meaning each Spanish is a variation of two languages, and that there’s different ways she speaks to others in certain situations like having two tongues. Gloria also argues that she shouldn’t be embarrassed by her language and accent by saying “I am my language” meaning her language is what makes her special and unique.

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A tongue is one of the most important body parts, if that’s what we shall call it, that a human being has. If it was not for the tongue, it would be a very quiet world. Gloria Anzaldúa, born in 1942, near the large Rio Grande Valley of South Texas, was bound to make a difference in lives before she ever knew it. When Gloria turned eleven she started to work in the fields as a migrant worker and then started on her family’s land after the passing of her father. In Gloria Anzaldúa’s the short story, How to Tame a Wild Tongue, she describes her upbringing and growing up in a dual culture society split in two.

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