The College Fever - "América" Los Tigres del Norte

 

       

Gloria Anzaldúa, narrative essay, “How to Tame a Wild Tongue” (1987) discusses how her own Spanish language branches out into personal linguistic slang based on where a person lives. Anzaldúa explains many words in our Spanish language cognate within the many language groups. She also talks about her own personal experience with ignominy from her own family because of the way she talks. Gloria Anzaldúa wrote this narrative essay to bring more awareness on teaching basic knowledge in our Spanish Language explaining and showing how we are treated and shamed by the way we speak. I assume that her intended audience would be Mexican American people who speak Spanish, of all ages, people of Latin descent.

 

My reaction to this writing was very emotional, it really gives an insight into how Mexican American people really feel, we are constantly shamed for the way we speak, it is broken Spanish, informal Spanish, or Chicano Spanish. It’s very despairing knowing that our own people shame us, and what makes it worse is that we are made fun of by the same people who were supposed to teach us our native language. My own experience was feeling lost in high school when I took Spanish as my foreign language thinking it would be easier than learning French as a whole new language but as the first few weeks passed I started to realize that we went learning my version of Spanish, we were learning Spain/Formal Spanish, we were a class full of Native Spanish Speaking students and everyone was confused on how we were failing and confused about our own language. This writing made me happy as well realizing that I wasn’t the only one feeling like this and it made me somewhat more confident in the way I speak my language. 

 

Gloria Anzaldúa gives detailed explanations and examples from personal experience on how people always told her to not speak a certain way, she spoke Chicano and was constantly told to tame her tongue. Anzaldúa states “I’ve never seen anything as strong or as stubborn.” he says.” She refers to her tongue, the way she speaks in her Spanish dialect, she mostly speaks Chicano. Since Spanish dialect is constantly shamed for not being “formal” or a “professional” way of speaking. She states “Chicano Spanish sprang out of the Chicanos’ need to identify ourselves as a district people. We needed a language with which we could communicate with ourselves, a secret language.” Gloria Anzaldúa uses both Logos and Pathos when explaining her reasonings. She uses Logos in explaining and stating facts on the many dialects that the Spanish language has. On the other hand, she uses Pathos when describing how she felt in her experience as a feminist speaking Chicano. Gloria Anzaldúa illustrates and describes perfectly what she faced and the type of discrimination she went through only because of the way she speaks, Anzaldúa speaks about the stereotypes made by her people and how they affected her growing up although that’s all she knew.

Work Cited

Anzaldúa, Gloria. “OpenAthens: 400.” How to Tame a Wild Tongue, Herencia: The Anthology of Hispanic Literature of the United States, 1987, login.openathens.net/auth