Serena Becker
Geography 101
Feb 16, 2021
Attack on Language
In "How to Tame a Wild Tongue" written by Gloria Anzaldua, the writer discusses her personal experience growing up having her culture torn from her and also how important it is that people are able to keep their language. For Anzaldua, having expereinces where people in her life tried to make her forget her language and where she came from was comparable to war against her. She argues that the Mexican-American culture in North America is being dominated by Americans. She also brings up a lot of interesting information that shows just how complex the different Mexican cultures are, and this goes to show that there is a lot more depth to Mexican-American culture than what is being taught in schools or workplaces. Anzaldua shares her experience and gives a glimpse of how difficult it is to grow up from a different culture in the U.S. and cling to your language and heritage, especially as a bilingual American.
As I read Gloria Anzalduas expereinces and what she had to share about this topic I felt that there was so much that I had not been made aware of about her culture. Something that stood out to me was when she talked about nosotros being a distorted version which only took on the male gender pronouns, but really there is such a thing as nosotras. This stood out to me because in all of my Spanish classes in high school we were taught that there was only nosotros, which aparently is not true. This is important because it seems like an attempt not only to overlook bilingual culture, but also women.
That is interesting that it was not mentioned in your Spanish class. I have heard elsewhere that people from Spain say only they speak the true language, maybe the teacher had this view or they were unaware how much the language had changed.
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