How to Tame a Wild Tongue

“Language is a male discourse.”

Anzaldúa echoes other feminist critics of her time when she notes that, in most languages, grammatical constructions default to the masculine This phenomenon is especially prominent in inflected languages like Spanish, where all nouns have genders. With maleness as the default, language is implicitly patriarchal independent of whether the meaning being expressed is explicitly patriarchal.

“Chicanos who grew up speaking Chicano Spanish have internalized the belief that we speak poor Spanish. It is illegitimate, a bastard language. And we internalize how our language has been used against us by the dominant culture, we use our language differences against each other.”

This quote gives an important context for the term “wild tongue” in the title. Here, “wild” means “illegitimate” or “bastard,” derogatory terms that alienate and oppress. Chicanos internalize this characterization of their language, reinforcing the dominant culture’s desire to oppress them.

“So, if you really want to hurt me, talk badly about my language.”

This is the first time Anzaldúa directly addresses the audience. The implied subject of the sentence is “you,” the person reading the essay. She breaks the fourth wall, so to speak, using free indirect discourse to address her readers and, in doing so, jolting the audience out of their passivity. It has the effect of awakening the political consciousness of the reader who, whether a Chicano who has internalized shame or an English speaker who demands accommodation, is forced to confront their complicity in oppression.

“There is no one Chicano language just as there is no one Chicano experience.”

The essay revolves around the idea that there are always multiple languages in any given culture. Throughout the essay Anzaldúa lists various English and Spanish languages she speaks, including multiple dialects and slang. Chicano culture has multiple languages and multiple experiences.

“I will no longer be made to feel ashamed of existing. I will have my voice: Indian, Spanish, white. I will have my serpent’s tongue—my woman’s voice, my sexual voice, my poet’s voice. I will overcome the tradition of silence.”

Anzaldúa views ethnic and linguistic identity as intricately entwined. The serpent’s split tongue is a metaphor to describe the split nature of growing up on the Mexican-American border speaking multiple languages. Here Anzaldúa reclaims all the cultures of her heritage: “Indian, Spanish, white.” She distinguishes between language (which she earlier calls a male discourse) on one hand and her “woman’s voice” on the other, exploring and embracing both sides of the binary.

“These folk musicians and folk songs are our chief cultural mythmakers, and they make our hard lives seem bearable.”

The borderland musicians Anzaldúa grew up listening to represent an important part of Chicano cultural history. They are the poets and mythmakers of Chicano culture. They tell stories about life on the border and weave narratives about the lives of Chicanos. The folk musicians are to the Chicano people what Homer was to the Greeks and Virgil to the Romans: “mythmakers” whose poetry helped form a cultural identity.

“There are more subtle ways that we internalize identification, especially in the forms of images and emotions. For me food and certain smells are tied to my identity, my homeland.”

Expanding her analysis beyond language to other cultural objects is another way Anzaldúa explores the eponymous tongue of her essay. “Tongue” becomes a synecdoche for taste. Taste in music, movies, and other pop culture, as well as taste in food, are all important parts of culture and cultural identity.

“Nosotros los Chicanos straddle the borderlands.”

Code-switching from the Spanish Nosotros los to the English “Chicanos straddle the borderlands” linguistically illustrates Anzaldúa’s argument that Chicanos live between cultures and languages. Her bold inclusion of such a sentence reflects her embrace her culture and language. The sentence structurally demonstrates the significance of Spanish-speaking and English-speaking culture to her identity; situating Spanish before English perhaps shows her allegiance first and foremost to the Spanish language.

“Being Mexican is a state of soul—not one of mind or citizenship.”

Chicanos view their Mexican identity as a matter of culture and ethnicity rather than citizenship and ideology. Mexican identity here has nothing to do with where one lives or was born but with culture and heritage.

“Chicanos suffer economically for not acculturating.”

Although Anzaldúa’s essay is focused on exploring internal struggles, this quote emphasizes the material struggle that face Chicanos. Because they resist adopting the cultural practices and language of dominant American culture, that culture discriminates against them in ways that affect them economically. Anzaldúa’s call to embrace Chicano identity may come at a cost.

“Chicanos did not know we were a people until 1965 when Cesar Chavez and the farmworkers united and I Am Joaquin was published and La Raza Unida was formed in Texas.”

Anzaldúa provides historical context to the formation of the Chicano identity that includes labor organization, literature, and political organization. These three sectors (economics, literature, and politics) are crucial dimensions through which cultural identity forms. The timing is important because it situates the struggle for Chicano rights within the larger context of the US civil rights movement.

“The struggle of identities continues, the struggle of borders is our reality still. One day the inner struggle will cease and a true integration will take place.”

The struggle to overcome internalized shame takes place against a backdrop of external struggle over the borderland. Anzaldúa refers to the ongoing conflict along the Mexican-American border, where Mexicans daily risk their lives to immigrate to the United States. She foresees a future where the internal conflict of identity will resolve, envisioning the large-scale self-actualization of the Chicano people.

“There is the quiet of the Indian about us. We know how to survive. When other races have given up their tongue, we’ve kept ours.”

Anzaldúa insists on the importance of not only acknowledging but also embracing Indigenous heritage. Approximately 7 million Mexicans speak an Indigenous language, and 68 Indigenous languages survive in Mexico. Indigenous culture has enabled Indigenous Mexicans and mestizos to survive colonization and oppression and, Anzaldúa argues, it will continue to play an important role in survival.