Gloria Anzaldua's How To Tame A Wild Tongue

In her piece entitled “How to Tame a Wild Tongue” Gloria Anzaldua uses her own life as a template for understanding the nuances and complexities of Chicano Spanish, its place within culture, both American and Hispanic, as well as the qualifiers it carries for those who speak it. First and foremost, she writes, “Chicano Spanish is a border tongue which developed naturally.” (Anzaldua, pg. 2) Chicano Spanish, Anzaldua argues, is a language of necessity, a language born of Spanish-speaking people living in a country where the predominant language was English. It is a language that exemplifies that very particular identity, a language that, Anzaldua admits, carries with it a certain connotation of being somehow inherently less. “It is illegitimate,” she writes, “a bastard language.” (Anzaldua, pg. 2)

But Anzaldua, and others identifying themselves as Chicano, will not that connotation carry with it an inherent shame.

It is tied up in the culture of the people, that the language cannot be adequately criticized without calling up the ire of the people who speak it. As a result, Anzaldua says that, “if you want to really hurt me, talk badly about my language. Ethnic identity is twin skin to linguistic identity—I am my language.” (Anzaldua, pg. 3) Cultural identity, she declares, personal and independent identity, those are inherently tied up in the language we speak. That is the universal message Anzaldua champions: that language defines who we are as much as the color of our skin, our sex, or a million other

things.
-And this talk of language gives way to a deeper, even more meaningful truth for Anzaldua to expound upon: that identity is wound tightly with sensuality. “There are more subtle ways that we internalize education,” Anzaldua writes (Anzaldua, pg. 7). Specifically, the senses are a primary means of defining both personal and cultural identity. Anzaldua explains it in terms of herself, specifically food. “Even now and 3,000 miles away, I can see my mother spicing the ground beef, pork and venison with chile. My mouth salivates at the thought of the hot steaming tamales I would be eating if I were home.” (Anzaldua, pg. 7)
Anzaldua also understands identity in terms of the duality of her ethnicity. “We are a synergy of two cultures with various degrees of Mexicanness or Angloness. I have so internalized the borderlands conflict that sometimes I feel like one cancels out the other and we are zero, nothing, no one.” (Anzaldua, pg. 9) It is that constant back and forth, that conflict of shame and pride, white and Latino, that grinding together of one thing against the other, that shapes identity. In fact, as far as Chicanos are concerned, and definitely at least as far as Anzaldua is concerned, conflict is essential to identification. “We know how to survive. When other races have given up their tongue, we have kept ours. We know what it is to live under the hammer blow of the dominant norteamericano culture.” (Anzaldua, pg. 10)
Therefore, while Anzaldua’s understanding of cultural identity is decidedly Chicano, the nature of her experience is universal of all those who wish to maintain and cultivate a sense of personal and cultural identity. In fact, she offers the reader a glimpse of what a balancing act it is to balance one’s cultural identity against the personal one.

Works Cited
Anzaldua, Gloria. “How to Tame a Wild Tongue.” 33-45. Print.