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Wild Tongue And Learning To Read By Frederick Douglass

1175 Words5 Pages

In How to Tame a Wild Tongue by Gloria Anzaldua and Learning to Read by Frederick Douglass, both authors tell a story about how society discriminated against their culture because of their identity. Anzaldua talks about her struggles as a Chicano (Mexican-American) and how she was discriminated for speaking the Chicano language in America. The Chicano language is a mixture of Spanish and English also referred to as Spanglish. Growing up and spending most of her life in the Rio Grande Valley of southern Texas where she considered herself to be inside what she calls the “borderlands”. The borderlands is the border between the United States and Mexico, but Anzaldua refers to them as “Borderlands also exist wherever different cultures, languages, …show more content…

While Douglass was young his mistress would give him lessons on how to read, but the mistress’s wife put it to a stop before Douglass could learn how to read. Even though Douglass wasn’t given any more lessons by his mistress, that didn’t prevent him from learning to read. When he was sent on errands by his mistress he would go out and complete them as fast as he could so that he could stop and talk to the local boys and get lessons from them. As Douglass grew and learned to read he came to the realization that the only reason his owner didn’t want him to learn how to read was so that he couldn’t come to understand that his life as a slave was unjust. Both Anzaldua and Douglass were discriminated against for their culture in which they were stripped of their identity which is unjust especially in a country that considers themselves to be the land of the …show more content…

Anzaldua said that she has been accused by many Latinos and Latinas of “ruining the Spanish language” (207). Many Latinos and Latinas consider speaking the Chicano language “a mutilation of Spanish” (Anzaldua 207). If you look at the Spanish language there is many different forms around the world, one example being the Spanish spoke in Spain is slightly different that the Spanish spoke in Mexico. Having many different words with the same meaning, different variations of slang words, and simply tenses of the same word being altered there are significant differences. Anzaldua lived in the United States and last time I checked the United States was an entirely different country than Mexico and Spain. Especially living in the United States of America which is considered to be one of the most diverse countries in the world where there are many different languages spoken by people who come from all over the world, having one more language spoken within our country shouldn’t be a

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