Taming A Wild Tongue And Mother Tongue Essay

Gloria Anzaldua in How to Tame a Wild Tongue and Amy Tan in Mother Tongue both share a similar message in their essays, they argue that every single culture faces different language obstacles when learning the english language. Both struggle to develop the correct form of english, the one considered acceptable by society. Both Tan and Anzaldua teach us about their ethnic backgrounds, in an effort to better help us learn of their struggles. Amy Tan, is of asian descent, and tells us how growing up with a mother who spoke “broken english” influenced the person she became and how she approached the world. Gloria Anzaldua, considered herself a Mexican American but mainly Chicana, and she tells us of her struggle to accept her roots and to find a place where she belonged. Ultimately, this also influenced who Anzaldua came to be. The
Her mother would tell her that she needed to master english, while her teacher would tell her that she would never belong in a class that spoke English. As her mother would say “I want you to speak English. Pa’hallar buen trabajo tienes que saber hablar el ingles bien. Que vale toda tu educación si todavía hablas el ingles con un “accent”, my mother would say, mortified that I spoke English like a Mexican “(Anzaldua 31) Anzaldua struggled to find her roots, to find a side that she identified with the most. Anzaldua explains this struggle in the following quote “We are constantly exposed to the Spanish of the Mexicans, on the other side we hear the Anglos’ incessant clamoring so that we forget our language...Neither eagle nor serpent but both. And like the ocean, neither animal respects the borders.” ( Anzaldua 33) Anzaldua was able to accept both sides of her culture without no longer feeling ashamed of her roots, she learned that she would never fit in perfectly, she would have to accept both sides of her culture and embrace