Summary Of Taming A Wild Tongue By Gloria Anzaldúa

In a chapter of her book, Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza (1942), called “How to Tame a Wild Tongue,” feminist and Chicana, Gloria Anzaldúa, asserts how language is a part of her identity as well as others’. She accomplishes this by providing an allegory and using several anecdotes, metaphors, asyndeton, and repetition to demonstrate and emphasize the oppression of culture she has experienced personally. Furthermore, Anzaldúa’s intention is to encourage others to take pride in their culture and heritage in order to rid America of its ethnic margins and create a place of solid unity, where every individual is treated as an equal. Throughout the chapter, she establishes an unapologetic tone for being herself and constantly switches from

To introduce her topic, Anzaldúa chooses to tell a short story of her experience with a dentist, which carried both a literal and figurative meaning. The way she subtly embeds the current issue of one culture “controlling [the] tongue” of another with a story aids in grasping the attention of the audience (33). In addition, the author uses a series of rhetorical questions to provoke a similar thought process from the reader, so it is easier for them to relate and find relevance to what she is arguing. The following paragraphs discuss how others want her to be silent and conform, whether it be learning English or being a “well-bred” girl who does not “answer back” (34). Anzaldúa provides an anecdote that reveals how she would receive punishment for just

She goes on to tell various stories of her childhood to explain Chicano Spanish and its influence on the lives of Chicanas. With her stories, the audience can sympathize with the internalization and “psychological conflict” of identification she, as well as other Chicanas, had through childhood experiences with culture (43). In addition, Anzaldúa uses her childhood anecdotes before she discusses the present conflict of Chicanos continuing to have a “struggle of identities” in order to show just how long this problem has been around for them (44). However, this does not stop her from expressing her hope for the future. When responding to those who wish to oppress her culture, she lists off all the cultures that refuse conform, producing an overwhelming feeling when she does not use conjunctions but, instead, continues to acknowledge one culture right after another. Anzaldúa also expresses that all Hispanics must take pride in who they are because, “with that recognition, [they] became a distinct people,” so they must continue to hold true to themselves and their culture