Gloria Anzaldúa's How to Tame a Wild Tongue
“So, if you want to really hurt me, talk bad about my language. Ethnic identity is twin skin to linguistic identity – I am my language. Until I can take pride in my language, I cannot take pride in myself. Until I can accept as legitimate Chicano Texas Spanish, Tex-Mex, and all the other languages I speak, I cannot accept the legitimacy of myself. Until I am free to write bilingually and to switch without having always to translate, while I still have to speak English or Spanish when I would rather speak Spanglish, and as long as I have to accommodate the English speaker rather than having them accommodate me, my tongue will be illegitimate.”
It would be a lie if I started to explain how I dealt with the difficulty of this passage, because the truth is that I didn’t find anything difficult about Gloria Anzaldúa’s text; no, it’s not that I’m the smartest reader out there, it’s just that I completely understand what she’s talking about; being a Mexican kid that just moved to the U.S. I guess I’ve too been surrounded by the mixture of the different textures that both English and Spanish, and the combination of these two posses.
I chose this passage because I found the pride that she takes in her identity as a “Chicana” to be beautiful and strong. She’s not completely Mexican nor completely American, she’s a mixture of both; she really is “a border woman”, she’s the breed of the two cultures, and this union can be seen in the languages she professes so much love for.
I don’t agree with several aspects of her language classification. I don’t necessary think that it’s wrong, but she made them sound like totally different languages when the truth is that they’re just the mixture of two and different regional differences within them both.
I admit that I’ve never been a big fan of the “Chicano Spanish”. I’ve always loved Latin-American literature and I’ve always found my language (Spanish) to be this rich and beautiful way of speaking, capable of expressing the same
It would be a lie if I started to explain how I dealt with the difficulty of this passage, because the truth is that I didn’t find anything difficult about Gloria Anzaldúa’s text; no, it’s not that I’m the smartest reader out there, it’s just that I completely understand what she’s talking about; being a Mexican kid that just moved to the U.S. I guess I’ve too been surrounded by the mixture of the different textures that both English and Spanish, and the combination of these two posses.
I chose this passage because I found the pride that she takes in her identity as a “Chicana” to be beautiful and strong. She’s not completely Mexican nor completely American, she’s a mixture of both; she really is “a border woman”, she’s the breed of the two cultures, and this union can be seen in the languages she professes so much love for.
I don’t agree with several aspects of her language classification. I don’t necessary think that it’s wrong, but she made them sound like totally different languages when the truth is that they’re just the mixture of two and different regional differences within them both.
I admit that I’ve never been a big fan of the “Chicano Spanish”. I’ve always loved Latin-American literature and I’ve always found my language (Spanish) to be this rich and beautiful way of speaking, capable of expressing the same