Blog 5

It can be difficult to understand what it is like for someone who is trying to adjust to one culture when they have lived their life in another one. Gloria Anzaldua captures this experience completely in her excerpt titled How to Tame a Wild tongue. Anzaldua starts off her writing by explaining how all throughout her time of taking classes she was trying to change herself- accent and all. She explains that things can be so different from one place to another. The first time she heard the word “nosotras” spoken by a Puerto Rican, it sounded unfamiliar. This is the female version of the commonly used Spanish word “nosotros”. For Anzaldua, this felt like she had been taken from the freedom of being a woman. Somewhere down the line, people slowly stopped using the female version of this word and began to group everyone into one category—male. She writes about how complex all of the different languages are and even different versions of each language. As she grew up, she spoke different languages with simply the different people she would see in her everyday life. With her sister, she often spoke what they called tex-mex; switching back and forth between Spanish and English. [a colon to further explain what tex-mex is]. Throughout the years, Spanish has consistently changed from dropping the beginning or end of a word to combining two words to create something that sounds completely different. The author emphasizes how horrible the feeling was to be talked down to for the language she spoke. Home was somewhere that she never wanted to be ashamed of. Thinking about her favorite movies, music, and food gave her comfort. To Anzaldua, being Mexican is a state of soul and nothing can take that away.

In the beginning of the story, Anzaldua uses the parenthetical dash multiple times. For example, “I remember being caught speaking Spanish at recess—that was good for three licks on the knuckles with a sharp ruler” ( 1). In this case, she is using it to emphasize the point of what happened is she was caught speaking Spanish. Although this does not need to be a dash, it is made into a stronger point with it. The author then uses both semi colons and a comma in a sentence. This allows her to list some points while still keeping the dependent clause separated at the end. The sentence was, “For a people who are neither Spanish not live in a country in which Spanish is the first language; for a people who live in a country in which English is the reigning tongue but who are not Anglo; for a people who cannot entirely identify with either standard Spanish not standard English, what recourse is left to them but to create their own language?” (Anzaldua, 3).

This story is extremely strong. She, like many others, has been mistreated for someone that is a part of her. As we looked at in class, this is happening to so many people everywhere. I think some students will not stick up for their language and culture out of fear. In this example, especially at the end, the author explains very strongly how she feels about her culture. Everyone deserves to have this kind of passion for their culture or background but sometimes they aren’t given the chance. In my classroom, I plan to put an emphasis on sharing each individual’s culture and making sure everyone is proud of it. Since I will be teaching Elementary Education, this will give them a good basis of pride to start off with while they are still young. In my research project, I want to look deeper into how  this has been affecting people throughout history. I’m curious if it has gotten better or worse and what people are doing to help.