“And our tongues have become dry, the wilderness has dried out our tongues, and we have forgotten our speech.” This quote by Irena Klepfisz is featured in Gloria Anzaldua’s essay “How to Tame a Wild Tongue”. In this piece, Anzaldua writes about her background being a Chicana and how the Chicano culture is continually undermined and criticized.
Being stuck in a middle-ground between English and Spanish, Anzaldua describes how she really speaks eight languages: Standard English, working class and slang English, Standard Spanish, Standard Mexican Spanish, North Mexican Spanish dialect, Chicano Spanish, Tex Mex, and Pachuco. And I’m not even bilingual! I can’t even begin to imagine how difficult it must be to speak not two, not three, but eight different languages. Because she so often had to switch between languages to adapt to the people she was talking to, there were only a few select situations in which Anzaldua could speak freely. Again, reading this shocked me as I compared it to what I know. In my life, I can speak regularly with my family, friends, classmates, peers, teammates, and many others; I only really have to monitor my language when addressing respected adults and in academic situations. How restricted must one feel when your very means of communication is constantly something you have to think about, change, monitor, censor?
And not only is it difficult keeping track of so many tongues, society makes it hard belonging into all or any of them. Native Spanish speakers called Anzaldua a traitor for speaking English, but her teachers punished her when she spoke anything else. Though her family was originally from Mexico, she couldn’t identify with Mexicans. Though she was born and raised in the United States, she couldn’t identify with Americans. And the one thing she can identify with, Chicano, is not even classified as a real culture by society. “It is illegitimate, a bastard language.” Anzaldua says. What must it be like to feel as though you only belong to something fake?
I think it is very sad that society thinks they have the power to demean an entire culture and language. It is no one’s place to tell a group of people they don’t belong. I have a great deal of respect for Anzaldua and others like her. It’s never easy fitting in, but it’s certainly no picnic for Chicanos. But, despite that, they are strong. “Stubborn, perserving, impenetrable as stone, yet possessing a malleability that renders us unbreakable, we will remain.”
palomatapia 