AnzalduaWildTongue.pdf

GLORIA ANZALDUA How to Tame a Wild Tongue Gloria Anzaldua was born in 1942 in the Rio Grande Valley of South Texas. At age eleven.she began working in thefields as a migrant worker and then on herfamilys land after the death of herfather. Working her way through school, she eventually became a schoolteacher and then an academic, speaking and writing about feminis t, lesbian, and Chi- cana issues and about autobiography. She is best known for This Bridge CalJed My Back: Writin gs by Radical Women of Color ( 1981), which she edited with Cherrie Moraga, and BorderlandsfLa Frontera: The New Mestiza (1987). Anzaldua died in 2004. How to Tame a Wild Tongue is from BorderlandsfLa Frontera. In it, Anzaldua is concerned with many kinds of borders - between nations, cultures, classes, genders, languages. When she writes, So, if you want to really hurt me, talk badly about my language (par. 27), Anzaldua is arguing for the ways in which identity is intertwined with the way we speak and for the ways in which people can be made to feel ashamed of their own tongues. Keeping hers wild - ignoring the closing of linguistic borders - is Anzalduas way of asserting her identity. Were going to have to control your tongue, the dentist says, pulling out all the metal from my mouth. Silver bits plop and tinkle into the basin. My mouth is a motherlode .· The dentist is cleaning out my roots. I get a whiff of the stench when I gasp. I cant cap that tooth yet, youre still draining, he says. Were going to have to do some- thing about your tongue, I hear the anger rising in his voice. My tongue keeps pushin g out the wads of co