How To Tame A Wild Tongue Essay

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. One being her academic culture, where she is expected to speak clearly and adhere and know to the English language. Another being her Spanish Chicano culture, certain expectations and different regulations are required of her starting at a very young age, and throughout her life growing up in a Mexican-American family. Gloria’s Latino culture has brought along many challenging beliefs, even

“If a person, Chicana or Latina, has a low estimation of my native tongue, she also has a low estimation of me. Often with mexicanas y Latinas we’ll speak English as a neutral language. Even among Chicanas we tend to speak English at parties or conferences. Yet, at the same time we’re afraid the other will think we’re agingadas because we don’t speak Chicano Spanish.” These sentences are mostly in English, but were oppressed by the three words “mexicanas y Latinas.” Gloria is using Spanish and English, we could also call it Spanglish, within these sentences, which is a mixture of English and Spanish. She is switching between the two explaining how Latina and Chicana’s speak Spanish and English to communicate in different ways. The languages that people speak are different to everyone even if they are speaking the same language. Language is a part of how someone identifies