“How to Tame a Wild Tongue” is an autobiographical essay written by Gloria Anzaldua. It was published in 1987 as part of her collection Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza. Throughout the essay she talks about how language is connected to one’s identity. Anzaldua begins with a story about being at the dentist and the dentist told her something that gave her the idea of how do you tame a wild tongue. She then uses this phrase “How to Tame a Wild Tongue” to connect it to her overall message that people should not be afraid to speak in their mother tongue.
This reading reminded me a little of the TedTalk by Saleem when he talked about being mocked for his accent so he used voice editors to cover it. Both of the authors had an inspiring message to show representation for those going through similar events they had gone through growing up.
The significance of the dentist scene was to create a metaphor for everything else Anzaldua would bring up later on. “‘We’re going to have to do something about your tongue,’ the dentist says” (Anzaldua 33) In the example, most people will just have one interpretation, she can’t keep her tongue still at the dentist. But reading more, I realized it was a metaphor for the people who tried to bury her native tongues. The dentist represents her teachers, and even her mother. Her own mother was disappointed when she heard Gloria speaking English with her Mexican tongue. Anzaldua gives us a story when she was at recess and her teachers had told her to stop with her accent. This felt like the day at the dentist again, people were telling her to “do something” about her tongue. In other words, tame her wild tongue.
When I was in elementary, I was learning English and I remember how the teachers alienated me because I was different. Being the only Chinese student, they often told me to correct my English. Or to not speak it at all. As I got better at English, my mother was disappointed. She felt that I was losing my native tongue and told me to not speak English at home. But how was I supposed to stop speaking English when English here meant opportunities and success. I remember being so confused. Was I Chinese or was I American? At the time I was able to grasp the concept that I could be both. I thought I had to choose, so I chose American because we were there. Whenever I called back to my grandparents in China, they would tell me that I was no longer Chinese, but it hurt hearing it from them because I lived with them in China for a couple years when I was little. It felt that my home was being taken away. But in China, my cousins would call and show me that they were learning English. But somehow, they were praised for it while I was shamed for learning English in America.
Overall Anzaldua was able to use metaphors to deliver the theme of not feeling pushed to choose between your multiple identities. Losing the others when you do choose one. To embrace them both and create something new before it’ll be gone in the long term. Her writing was able to connect with many people and show that being multilingual is not a weakness but a strength.
