How to Tame a Wild Tongue

“How to Tame a Wild Tongue” is an autobiographical essay by Hispanic American writer and scholar Gloria Anzaldúa. The essay was published in her 1987 collection Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza. Anzaldúa is perhaps best known as the coeditor, alongside Cherrie Moraga, of the influential collection A Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color (1981).

The main theme of “How to Tame a Wild Tongue” is the interconnectedness of identity and language. The essay begins with the story of the author as a young girl getting her teeth cleaned. Her unruly tongue increasingly annoys the dentist, who tells her to tame it. She then briefly recounts stories about white English-speaking teachers chastising her for speaking Spanish at recess and about authority figures, including her mother and college professors, mandating that she speak English without an accent. She asserts that these attempts to censor her language and her accent violate her First Amendment rights. The essay is divided into six sections. Throughout, Anzaldúa writes passages in italicized Chicano (Mexican American) Spanish usually followed by an English translation.

Overcoming the Tradition of Silence

Anzaldúa’s refusal to censor her language is particularly controversial because of her gender. Recounting how, as a child, authority figures like her parents and priest told her that well-behaved girls are quiet and do not talk back, Anzaldúa retrospectively realizes that the language used to scold children into silence is only directed toward girls. She calls language a “male discourse.” It is patriarchal, a point that she illustrates with the example of nosotros, meaning “us” in English. The -os ending is masculine. It is the default ending used in Spanish to refer to mixed-gendered groups; in Chicano Spanish, it even refers to all-female groups. She expresses her surprise upon hearing two women, a Puerto Rican and a Cuban, refer to themselves as nosotras, realizing for the first time that there was a word to express “us women” in Spanish.

Oyé como ladra: el lenguaje de la frontera

In addition to receiving criticism from Anglos for speaking poor English, Anzaldúa receives criticism from Spanish-speaking Latinos for speaking Chicano Spanish, a borderland dialect. She argues that Chicano is a legitimate language, one that developed to reflect the identity of the Chicano people who live on the border between Mexico and the United States. Chicano people speak a variety of languages derived from both English and Spanish, from dialects to slang to formal language learned in school. She embraces a practice she calls code-switching, casually and rapidly communicating in more than one language or dialect in a single conversation.

Chicano Spanish

Anzaldúa gives a linguistic history of Chicano Spanish covering more than 250 years. She illustrates that the language collapses adjacent vowels and omits certain consonants between vowels. Geography also played an important role in the development of a distinct Chicano dialect. Certain borderland regions preserved archaic Spanish words due to geographic barriers that limited contact with other Spanish-speaking regions. Consequently, Chicano Spanish is derived from medieval Castillano and retains Extramadura and Andalucia Spanish’s distinct pronunciation. Regional proximity also accounts for the high volume of anglicisms, words derived from English, that appear in Chicano.

Linguistic Terrorism

Anzaldúa posits that Chicanos have internalized shame because of the language they speak. Latino adults and authority figures criticize Chicanos from childhood for not speaking “proper” Spanish. Unlike Latinos growing up in Spanish-speaking countries, where Spanish is taught in schools and Spanish language immersion is the norm, the Chicano growing up in the United States finds Spanish “outlawed.” Chicanos internalize shame at not speaking “proper” Spanish, making them feel “uncomfortable talking in Spanish to Latinas.” In Chicano spaces, Chicanos typically default to speaking English, yet worry about appearing “not Chicano enough” for that reason. Anzaldúa argues that judging one another based on language capabilities is oppressive, reinforcing censorship by both the Anglo and Latino. She realizes that there is no one Chicano language but many and that to insult her language is to insult her. She argues that language is integrally tied to ethnic identity, and Chicanos should embrace their languages to embrace their Chicano identity.

“Vistas,” corridos, y comida: My Native Tongue

Anzaldúa reports that discovering literature by Chicano authors awakened her to the Chicano identity. She realized, “We really existed as a people” (44). She continued to cultivate an interest in Chicano literature and, as a teacher in the 1970s, secretly taught it to her high school students against the wishes of her principal. Chicano literature continued to be a site of struggle for Anzaldúa, who insisted on pursuing the topic for her dissertation despite opposition from some of her professors.

Yet even before Anzaldúa began studying Chicano literature, she was steeped in Chicano culture through borderland music, movies, and cuisine. The sights, sounds, smells, and tastes that Anzaldúa evokes of childhood on the Mexican-American border show how cultural and ethnic identification is internalized. She writes, they “are tied to my identity, to my homeland” (42). This internalization is so strong that even years later and thousands of miles away, Anzaldúa remembers the taste of her mother’s tamales.

Si le preguntas a mi mamá, “¿Qué eres?”

Chicanos living on the borderland define Mexican identity as “a state of soul” rather than of “mind” or “citizenship” (43). It is one of many identities they claim, and Anzaldúa exposes how these different identifications are complicated. To identify as Spanish or Spanish American is to omit their Indigenous identity, their “predominant Indian genes” (43). Identifying as Mexican American poses a similar issue as it elides Chicana identity from Mexican to American identity. To claim Chicana identity is to refuse enculturation, to resist conforming to American culture. Chicanos, like other people of color, suffer economically for not adopting American culture. Likewise, not adopting Mexican culture leaves the Chicano people at the crossroads of cultural identity, producing “a kind of dual identity” since they identify with neither American nor Mexican culture (43).

The solidification of Chicano identity happened in 1965, catalyzed by Cesar Chavez’s labor organizing, the publication of Rodolfo “Corky” Gonzalez’s Chicano epic poem I am Juaquin, and the formation of the Raza Unida political party in Texas. The movement’s literature, politics, and organizing helped Chicano people realize they had a distinct language and culture. Despite this realization, Chicanos still face the internal struggle of being between cultures and languages. Violent and oppressive American culture is, she says, one “we know how to survive,” and Anzaldúa anticipates the mestizas and mestizos outliving American culture (44).