Gloria Anzaldua's How To Tame A Wild Tongue

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“Yet the struggle of identities continues, the struggle of borders is our reality still. One day the inner struggle will cease and a true integration take place.” This was written by a strong, lesbian, Chicana feminist named Gloria Anzaldua. She is extremely assertive about her identity due to the miscellaneous background she came from since she was born in South Texas, because her parents were immigrants. As a result, she wrote this autobiography, “How to Tame a Wild Tongue,” to express not only how diversity affects determining one’s personal identity, but also the significance of one’s language. Hence, she involves identity as the focal point of the writing to enhance the reader of the cumulative problems brought by language discrimination. …show more content…

For that reason, she makes this article bilingual rather than just in English to show her love to her language. Not only but also, she selects powerful words to emphasize the discrimination she consumed. For example, when she wanted to describe how she got “accused [of being a traitor] by various Latinos and Latinas.” She used strong words; such as “deficient”, or not having enough quality of an specified item in this case Spanish since she is speaking English. Moreover, she used the word “mutilation,” or a severe injury that causes disfigurement to accentuate what the Latinos thought of her. ““We’re going to have to control your tongue,”” Gloria starts this article with this quote as a metaphor to exemplify the acclimatization path as something tremendously vicious. Thus, the author supports this quote throughout the essay by writing about the acculturation process she experienced. Hence, she tries to show different perspectives, the Hispanic side and the Anglo side, to support her claim. On the Hispanic side, there are the Mexicans who urge to speak proper English with no accent in order to succeed, whilst the Anglo side, there is the urgency of adaption. However, the reader can interpret that Gloria’s desire was to be able to freely speak Chicano Spanish and have her own language and identity respected. As a result, the significance of this article is to urge the reader into fighting for their own identity by having their language always

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