How to Tame a Wild Tongue Essay

The world is filled with many people, and the one thing that can make someone stand out is the culture they come from. Imagine if you had to live in a world where you must be a certain way just to please someone! In 'How To Tame A Wild Tongue' By Gloria Anzaldua spoke Chicano Spanish and was not treated equally with others. Throughout the story, it is shown that getting rid of something cultural that makes you who you are such as an accent is not necessary to blend in with society. Just because there are people in this world that are close-minded to the idea that others from different cultures can be around another culture doesn’t mean that it is required to change who you are. Changing who you are to help better blend in with everyone around you is not going to help you long-term. In the story, we learn that Gloria had some hardships growing up speaking Chicano around others who didn’t even know anything about Chicanos. Gloria would get very frustrated by this and would also get upset when many Latinos and Latinas say “You’re speaking the oppressor’s language by speaking English, you’re ruining the Spanish Language” (Anzaldua), or even Americans when would say “If you want to be American, speak ‘American.’ If you don’t like it, go back to Mexico where you belong.” (Anzaldua) Words spoken like this to Gloria didn’t really affect her because she knew what she needed to do in order for certain people to understand her. Chicano Spanish gave Gloria the ability to speak many languages in order to communicate with many people instead of one and throughout her life, she felt as if it really did come in hand. While being able to know all these languages, Gloria finds out who she truly is by communicating with various people. Throughout the story, Gloria begins to express how she began to identify who she was because of all of the events that took place in her past. At the beginning of her story, she begins to talk about how many people didn’t understand her and her language and because of that, she was treated unfairly. One instance she refers to in the story is when she was “caught speaking Spanish at recess- that was good for three licks on the knuckles with a sharp ruler.” (Anzaldua) Another time in the story is when she mentions “Pan American University, I, and all Chicano students were required to take two speech classes. Their purpose: to get rid of our accents.” (Anzaldua) Although those aren’t the best memories, It was times like this that Gloria won’t ever forget and have helped shape her into the woman she is today. Towards the end of Gloria’s story, you can tell that she learned to accept who she was and was no longer afraid to have to meet other people’s expectations of her. Gloria was already shown many times in life that it isn’t always going to be easy but instead of using the past as a weakness she was able to grow it into a strength. She used her knowledge of languages to help her learn even more ways to communicate with others by deciding to pick up more like Standard Spanish and Standard Mexican Spanish “from Mamagrande Locha and from reading Spanish and Mexican literature.” (Anzaldua) She even picked up a North Mexican dialect by learning “from los recien llegados, Mexican immigrants, and braceros.” (Anzaldua) By Gloria learning to accept herself she was able to open herself up to all the possibilities she can do with her voice. The story “How To Tame A Wild Tongue” shows that the cultural aspects of a person are nothing to be ashamed of but to be embraced in order to be true to yourself. The author uses many flashbacks throughout the story to help contribute to the purpose of being able to embrace who you are. Many of the flashbacks bring back a dark time in Gloria’s life but we learn after reading the story that these memories are some of which she uses as a reminder of how far she has come. Gloria’s story has shown that we may have close-minded people who will try and change us into something we are not, just because they don’t agree with us or our beliefs. Or we may finally start to realize that our past can help us dig down deep within ourselves to find out who we truly are in life. And once we are able to accept who we are, we will open up a new door that will help us to reach our full potential with the best mindset possible. Gloria was able to do all of these things and more because she stopped trying to please others and learned to embrace her Chicano culture.