How to Tame a Wild Tongue
...dialects, mixing dialects, and speaking differently to every other person, I’m sure she had a difficult time as a Chicano without a set language of her own. Within the essay, Gloria uses Spanish at certain times in a paragraph; sometimes the Spanish is just a few words and their translations and other times it is a Spanish phrase or sentence. I believe that the reason for the Spanish within the reading is to show Gloria’s own experience with a different language and show how difficult it was for her to keep “code switching.” Also, Gloria might be trying to show that she doesn’t have to act or be a certain way just because someone tells her to be. She can be whoever she wants to be, and speak however she wants to speak. Personally, I cannot relate to Gloria’s experience as an immigrant, or not fitting into a society, mainly because I was born into a land where English is the dominant language, and I have had no reason to adapt to a different culture. I sympathize for all of Gloria’s hardships with the language barriers she had to face, and having to be something she wasn’t. Gloria could never find acceptance within her culture, so she could never truly accept herself. Gloria Anzaldua did not have a language which she could call her own. She had to adapt for several different cultures, and take up eight different dialects in order to be understood, but never accepted. She has tried her whole life to find herself and...