How To Tame A Wild Tongue By Gloria Anzaldúa

Imagine being placed in a room surrounded by ethnicities making you a minority. How would people perceive you? You may feel oppressed, criticized, lonely, or possibly neglected. The only way to defend yourself is your own language. This is Gloria Anzaldúa’s situation in her personal narrative, “How to Tame a Wild Tongue,” a chapter from her book, Borderland/La Frontera. Anzaldúa realizes American territory creates an environment full of insecurities. She is trying to escape the ideas of oppression through her own language as she uses Chicano Spanish throughout the text. Language allows one another to communicate using a secret language. Language progresses culture by passing down ideas and experiences to future generations. Through the power of language, one can understand and learn a person’s identity. …show more content…
Anzaldúa starts off with a metaphor, sitting in a dentist room where her “roots” are purposely being removed. She refuses to obey orders, so she fights back against the enraged doctor, “My tongue keeps pushing out the wads of cotton, pushing back the drills, the long thin needles” (Anzaldúa 4). If one delves deeper into the meaning of this quote, Anzaldúa is pleading for help. Her identity is in danger. The instruments which represents America’s heavy influence is trying to eradicate Anzaldúa’s culture. In Anzaldúa’s context, American society refuses for any person to display their own culture. However, the process proves to be unsuccessful due to the strong roots. Just like how tooth roots provide a foundation to be kept in place, the roots as an immovable