Allunga

“Who is to say that robbing people of its language is less violent than war?” Ray Gwyn Smith. I’ve always had this struggle with my identity because I am Mexican and American. I grew up speaking Spanish and English, and was always being policed on what language I was allowed to speak. If I was with my parents they only wanted me to speak in Spanish and when I was at school I was actually forced to only speak English. Gloria Anzaldua writes about the struggles Mexican Americans have in America within our own community and within the “American” standards. Langue is a part of our culture it’s how we begin to communicate with those around us. In this article she explains how Chicanos express themselves through language, we speak different English than White Americans and we speak different Spanish than Mexicans. We get criticized by both for speaking incorrectly; I think it’s important to shine light on the oppression of language in today’s life and how it affects our culture. I will discuss how our culture and language shapes our identity but there can be many obstacles oppressing the way you express yourself from within our own Chicano community and within white American community.

Although our society is slowly developing a more accepting attitude toward differences, several minority groups continue to suffer from cultural oppression. In her essay “How to Tame a Wild Tongue,” Gloria Anzaldúa explores the challenges encountered by these groups. She especially focuses on her people, the Chicanos, and describes the difficulties she faced practicing her mother tongue. She argues that for many years, the dominant American culture has silenced their language. She claims that by forcing them to speak English and attempting to eliminate their accents, the Americans have robbed the Chicanos of their identity. She also addresses the issue of low self-esteem that results from this process of acculturation. Growing up in the United States, Anzaldúa says she had to accommodate to the American culture. The fact that she was discouraged from practicing her native language induced her to become ashamed of her roots. In addition, she explains that she constantly felt suppressed on account of her gender. By incorporating Spanish words, powerful personal anecdotes and historical facts about her people, Anzaldúa produces a unique composition in which she depicts an unfair and repressive world and reprimands the prejudices that hinder certain cultures from flourishing and establishing themselves.

In “How to Tame a Wild Tongue,” Gloria Anzaldua discloses her true feelings about societal and cultural imbalances encountered by minorities by successfully utilizing pathos. Based on historical context, Gloria Anzaldua was raised in the 1940s in the south where racial discrimination was more prevalent than in most parts of the United States. She reveals that Latin Americans, in spite of their distinct languages, are coerced to forgo their heritage and conform to Anglo society. Language, which is taken for granted here in the United States, is fervently cherished by Anzaldua, expressing “I am my language” (39).

A Lost Navajo Knowing my Navajo language, and culture, is my identity as well as how I represent myself in today’s society. In Chester Nez’s story of how he was shipped off to boarding school, he told his story of the heartbreaking truth, and his experience he had to be stripped of his own native language. Still my story is the opposite, but similar to Nez’s story the roles are reversed, Navajo children do not know their language fluently as our ancestors did. Growing up not being able to speak my own native language has given me negative advantages, yet I refuse to give up learning my language to one day I will be fluent in my language as a Navajo. Over the years I have also learned it is a privilege to be Native American.

The child may show anger or there may be constant crying when he plays with other children.

I was born in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, and live in the U.S. I went to Lowell High School and took all ESL because I didn’t know much about English. In order to succeed, I started to read and speak more English than my first language, yet I speak Khmer at home because my parent doesn 't want me to lose my native language. In America, there are a lot of immigrants that are trying to come and to get a better opportunity. According to Joel Swerdlow, in “Changing America,” “before 1965 more than three-quarters of all immigrants to the U.S. came from Europe, owing largely to quotas that favored northern Europeans.” (313). In 1965 Congress removed those quotas, and since then more than 60 percent of immigrants have come from Asia, Africa, the Caribbean, the Middle East, and Latin America. However, do the children of immigrants often feel they must lose their cultural identity in order to be an American? Children of immigrants often feel they must lose their cultural identity because they are changing their own cultural identity regarding three topics: Language, Dress, and Behavior.

June 8 of this summer in Normandy France, I had the privilege to pay my respects at the American Cemetery and memorial. It being two days since the memorial,the red poppies were still fresh adorned on the graves of men that marched on the beaches nearby 72 years ago. It was during this once in a lifetime opportunity that though I always believed myself to have a strong love for my country, for the first time I came to understand not only what it means to be American but my responsibility to America.

Minorities in America use a language that is not their own and over time they forget their own native language. This description fits me well, since I arrived in New York at the age of two and I have always viewed myself as an American. I thought that communicating in English was cool and my native language Tamil sounded backwards. Coming from a family that knew how to speak English fluently, I found myself speaking English rather than Tamil. One day my parents forced me to join a Saturday school where they taught Tamil. I cried and I wailed, but nothing worked out, I was pushed into attending the class, I had no choice but to go. When I got there, I was extremely upset and regretted being there. However, I was astonished to witness little

The ability of a people to hold on to its indigenous roots is important to the psycho-social development of such a people. For the descendants of the Africans brought to the Western hemisphere as slaves, Standard English is the imposed language of racial oppression. Since blacks in America, in most cases, cannot retrace their original tongue, they have a double edged sword with which to contend. Therefore, care must be taken so as not to

Recently the use of our language has become a hotly debatable subject that identifies who we are. Many people now routinely use Standard English and have been forced to speak it, because it’s the “American way”. On the one hand people who use their upbringing language are shamed for using it. On the other hand, many people who use their upbringing and Standard English are shame for it even more. Take as an example Chicanos are mestizos who have to live on the very border between different cultures and countries. In “How to Tame a Wild Tongue” by Gloria Anzaldua, she argues the negative social attitude toward Chicano ways of speaking and the harmful effect of this negative attitude on the self-identity of Chicano people who live in borderlands. Despite on how Americans are compelled to disregard their culture and subdue to American culture in order to fit in, using your own native language doesn’t violate any law in the book, therefore everyone should be able to speak freely in whatever language they please to use.

“Our language is the reflection of ourselves. A language is an exact reflection of the character and growth of its speakers” (Chavez). Language a puzzle piece of a person’s culture. In history Americans used the demise of others to receive their glory. People like the African slaves and Native Americans suffered at the hand of the Americans. Focusing mostly on the African slaves, Americans cut their culture away from them by forbidding their language in their new “home” and forced their language onto them. Though the Americans believed that they had the upper hand by cutting off the African culture, the Africans exceeded their power by founding their own american culture, through African American Vernacular English.

Thank You all for coming… You could have been anywhere tonight but you are here because you are socially concious indiviuals who see this country for what it is… In trouble. As a Black boy I cannot without lying say there have not been times in which I didn’t feel like I was looked at as more than another football player, a basketball player or just another face that did not belong. On more than one ocassion in the town of ansonia I have experienced racism, and have been subjected to racial threats and violence. I wish I could say that I was happy about my future prospects in this country but I can’t. I also will not sit idley by and fear for my life anymore and listen to voices of people screaming for justice with more of us dying

Today we stand in footsteps millennia old. May we acknowledge the traditional owners whose cultures and customs have nurtured, and continue to nurture, this land, since men and women awoke from the great dream. We respect and honour the presence of these ancestors who reside in the imagination of this land and whose irrepressible deep sense of being moves through all creation.

In “How to Tame a Wild Tongue”, Gloria Anzaldúa investigates the negative social attitudes toward the Chicano language and the effect that the negative attitude has on the identity of Chicano people. She insinuates that a person’s language is the key to identity, uniting people and helping them to identify with one another. She also makes an attempt to explain that some people might speak differently, but American citizens need to change their mindset towards diversity rather than continuing to look down on those that have different identities from us.

Over this period we lost most of what my family refers to as the “generation of greats”. In the span of a few months like a terrible chain reaction my grandfather, great uncle and two of my great aunts passed away. Recently, our celebrations of Christmas and Easter have had a somber undertone arising from the unfamiliar absence of our loved ones. I am thankful for this solemn tone. It reminds us to remember our family members who have passed away. Paradoxically, these reunions have also been a happy time. A time filled with story telling, laughing and a nostalgic longing for the “good old days” that I never was a part of. Though these tragedies have hacked at the roots of our family tree, we are growing back stronger and more tight-knit than before.