Taming A Wild Tongue By Gloria Anzaldúa

Academic Analysis: “How to Tame a Wild Tongue”
In Gloria Anzaldúa’s piece, “How to Tame a Wild Tongue,” she explores the complex relationship between identity and language. She provides personal vignettes that describe how others have reacted to her use of native language throughout life. Her article illustrates what it is like to be a person who speaks a minority language in a majority population. She introduces the essay by recounting the experience of a dentist capping a tooth and trying in vain to control her tongue. He becomes frustrated as her tongue keeps pushing out the swabs of cotton and instruments. She shares this analogy because to her it represents the role that society plays in systematically pressuring minority language

In her opening analogy, the dentist who tries to control her tongue represents the institutions and individuals who insist that she abandon her native tongue. They show disapproval when she speaks Spanish instead of English, or when she speaks Chicano Spanish instead of Standard Spanish or when she speaks English with an accent. Their voices echo in her head, “If you want to be American, speak ‘American.’ If you don’t like it, go back to Mexico where you belong” (Anzaldúa 15). To them, Anzaldúa, and others like her, represent a problem without a solution. They do not know what to do with tongues that break the rules of language and society’s

Their past lives straddle two parallel cultures, and their mixed language reflects this geography. Chicano Spanish springs from their history and enables them to communicate their experiences, realities, and values. The challenges of a desert environment mirror the challenges of retaining language and identity. Like her tongue that pushes out the dentist’s instruments, Anzaldúa rejects those who use shame and other social control to push her toward assimilation. “I will no longer be made to feel ashamed of existing. I will have my voice: Indian, Spanish, White, I will have my serpent’s tongue-my woman’s voice: my sexual voice, my poet’s voice. I will overcome the tradition of silence” (Anzaldúa 20). Instead of assimilation, she embraces her identity and the idea of integration. She wants to inhabit both cultures without judgment. She wants to teach about both English and Spanish writers, she wants to listen to both rock-and-roll and Tex-Mex music, she wants to watch both American and Mexican film, and she wants to read both English and Spanish works. This is only possible when those around her accept all aspects of her