Analysis Of Gloria Anzaldua 's Poem, The And English, A Multicultural Woman And The Struggles

On the one hand, English was the language used to communicate with outsiders. It was a tool for survival and held no personal meaning. It was crucial for public success. On the other hand, in Richard Rodriguez’s own words: “Spanish was associated with closeness”. By reading the previous passage, we can clearly infer that Spanish was the key to Richard’s confort. Hearing Spanish brought Rodriguez feelings of love, acceptance, family, and security. Spanish was a reminder of home and seemed to him a private language. In other words, he was surrounded by a web built by the family love and security which is conveyed by using the Spanish language, as the following passage shows: “...Spanish seemed to me the language of home...It became the language of joyful return...”. Moreover, if we consider the following passage:”You belong here. We are family members. Related. Special to one another” it is possible to say that Spanish language made Rodriguez felt as part of his family, creating a feeling of belonging and reinforcing family ties and ethnic heritage.

Scholar, Gloria Anzaldúa, in her narrative essay, “How To Tame A Wild Tongue’, speaks her many experiences on being pressured on what language to use. She then expresses how the discrimination made her to realize the ugly truth--that people reject languages that aren’t their own. She adopts logos, ethos and pathos in order to appeal toward her audience who is anyone who is not bilingual. One of the perspectives she takes on in her piece clearly expresses the relationship between language and identity and how it creates a conflict between her and the world.

Caminero-Santangelo, Marta. 2007. On Latinidad: U.S. Latino Literature and the Construction of Ethnicity. Gainesville, FL: University Press of Florida.

According to Americans, her language is considered a bastard language and that it is illegitimate. This is something that she takes to heart because her language is so important to her and it is so close to her and her family. Anzaldua shows this in the narration and structure of her writing. Her reading is bilingual instead of just in English. She will write a whole sentence in English but change one or two words in the sentence to Spanish. An example is when she says, “Often with mexicanas y latinos we’ll speak English as a neutral language” (64). Here is just a small example of how she includes her Spanish language in her English text. There are many different times when Anzaldua does this in her reading. This is something that may confuse an English reader with no Spanish experience. Often times when I came across words in Spanish I got confused and almost embarrassed because I had no clue what she was trying to say. I think this is a great way to show readers how she felt as a Chicano trying to learn a whole new language. Anzaldua’s strategy of narration and structure of the text really catches a reader’s eye. She also italicizes any Spanish words that she includes in her text. This is just another way of showing the audience how important her language is to her. Another strategy she uses in her writing is how she splits up her story. She has many

Throughout this essay, Anzaldua hold a prideful yet informative tone. When she tells her stories from her childhood, the tone changes to disbelief as she remembers all hardships she had to go through. Anzaldua gives another example of when her teachers mispronounced her name and as she tried to correct them they told her “If she wants

The rhetorical situation of Gloria Anzaldua’s, “How to Tame a Wild Tongue” from her book Borderlands/La Frontera, is the most important piece to her argument. A writer’s rhetorical situation is the use of the elements of the rhetor, audience, text, medium, context and exigence. Through the correct use of these pieces, a writer is able to greatly strengthen their argument and persuasive abilities. In her passage, Gloria Anzaldua is speaking to the unfair and unjust treatment of Spanish speaking children growing up in the United States educational system. These are not just kids who have moved here from a Spanish speaking country, but even those born in the United States that grew up speaking Spanish because of their family’s culture. Through her writing she wants to bring this into light to induce change and help children of the future be able to learn in an environment where they are also able to comfortable speak their own language. She is not looking for them to be able to speak their own language in an American school just because she wants to be difficult. In her eyes, your language is part of your identity of self. And without your language, you are also losing part of yourself. Again, she expresses and increases the persuasiveness of these ideas through the use of her rhetorical situation, which includes the rhetor, audience, text, medium, context and exigence.

Pat Mora is an award-winning writer that bases most her poems on tough cultural challenges and life as a Mexican American. She was born in a Spanish speaking home in El Paso, Texas. Mora is proud to be a Hispanic writer and demonstrates how being culturally different in America is not easy. She explains this through her experiences and the experience other’s. In her poems “Elena”, “Sonrisas”, and “Fences”, Mora gives you a glimpse of what life as a Mexican American is; their hardships, trials, strength that make them who they are.

Summary- In her essay “Se Habla Español,” Tanya Maria Barrientos discusses her struggle of being an English speaker with Latino heritage, her story to search for a sense of belonging. In childhood, she tries to Americanize herself and stay away from any Latino features, including Spanish. Later in her life, as the society become more welcoming to different ethnic groups, it is natural for her to embrace her own group; but her limitation on Spanish causes Barrientos feeling distant. However, Barrientos believes that there are others in the same dilemma and she encourages those to take the pride to be who they are.

Norma Elia Cantu’s novel “Canícula: Imágenes de una Niñez Fronteriza” (“Canícula: Snapshots of a Girlhood en la Frontera”), which chronicles of the forthcoming of age of a chicana on the U.S.- Mexico border in the town of Laredo and Nuevo Laredo in the 1940s-60s. Norma Elia Cantú brings together narrative and the images from the family album to tell the story of her family. It blends authentic snapshots with recreated memoirs from 1880 to 1950 in the town between Monterrey, Mexico, and San Antonio, Texas. Narratives present ethnographic information concerning the nationally distributed mass media in the border region. Also they study controversial discourse that challenges the manner in which the border and its populations have been

Throughout history poetry has been written since earlier 2000 B.C. and it was not until the late sixteen centuries, that poetry for Chicanos, (Mexican-American), were getting written. During and after the Mexican-American War of 1848, is when the Mexican-American poetry became popular. However, the real popularity and the creative literature activity among Chicano authors was in the 1960 through the 70’s; l this era being called the Renaissance Era. Chicano's often shape their poetry and solidify their cultural and the struggles of their minority culture. In this paper I am going to compare and contrast two Mexican-American poets. Telling the reader about the different types of poetry each one used, along with ways that they expressed themselves.

The main argument that both Anzaldua and Baldwin makes are very similar, and in these aspects, both are as equally strong. Both authors have experienced cultural and language discrimination throughout their lives, and wish to make a change. Anzaldua argues that Chicano English should not be considered an inferior language, while Baldwin claims that Black English should not be considered an inferior form of English. Anzaldua and Baldwin address the oppressors of their language and condemns them for marginalizing Chicano English and Black English, respectively. They also empower those who can relate to their situation, and encourage them to step up to be equal to that of speakers of other languages. While the main message and purpose of each author is clear, their delivery differs vastly.

　　Natalie Diaz's debut collection, When My Brother Was An Aztec, is a book of poems that accounts Diaz's skills in imaginative and lyrical language. The collection explores her past in unexpected form and images, tackling the subjects of her family, most notably her meth addicted brother, life on the reservation, and being a Native American woman. In this collection Diaz has filled the pages with rich and interesting images that rely on Native American culture, experiences of her own as a Native American woman, and mythology. As I read this collection I was struck by how heavy her images rested on the page and yet how weightless they seemed to fly off.

Anzaldua identifies as a part of an emerging new mestiza consciousness and community, which strives to move beyond simple dualistic thinking and endeavors to “act and not react” This important contradiction lies at the heart of Anzaldua’s analysis. “From this racial, ideological, cultural, and biological cross-pollicization, an ‘alien’ consciousness is presently in the making — a new mestiza consciousness, una conciencia de mujer. It is a consciousness of the Borderlands.” (Anzaldua, 1987, 420). Anzaldua’s proposition of the new consciousness mediates social relations, revolutionary social change, and its wider relevance to feminist theory through discussions of the Borderlands and its implications for ‘identity.’

The effects of marginalization can be seen in Gloria Anzaldua’s essay “How to Tame a Wild Tongue.” She is an American writer who expresses her feelings about social and cultural struggles that Americans with a deep Mexican heritage like her face when being raised in the United States. Anzaldua believes that everyone in the minority ethnic group is expected to be submissive and impressionable therefore, she conforms and identifies herself as four different things depending on the situation. She sees herself as Spanish when referring to her linguistic group. She sees herself as an Indian when referring to her genes. She sees herself as Spanish-American when talking with other Spanish-speaking people. Finally, she sees herself as Mexican-American when talking to Americans. This unclear way of perceiving herself

What I'm going to talk about is four major themes from the book, Borderlands La Frontera by Gloria Anzaldúa. The four major themes I chose to talk about are first, how you shouldn’t be ashamed of yourself, then how Anzaldúa shows deviant behavior throughout the book, also, how she found herself through poetry, and lastly, America’s melting pot.