26 pages • 52 minutes read
Gloria AnzalduaHow to Tame a Wild Tongue
Nonfiction | Essay / Speech | Adult | Published in 1987A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Index of Terms
Borderlands
Borderlands/La Frontera is the title of the book from which this essay comes. The border to which Anzaldúa refers is the geographical area between Mexico and the United States. A border is an abstract concept that the dominant culture reinforces through language, law, censorship, and citizenship. The borderlands are places of hybridity, where a specific cultural mixing forms a specific identity—in this case, that of Chicano culture and languages. To embrace this identity, Anzaldúa argues, Chicanos must learn to appreciate their culture and unlearn the shame they feel at being culturally different from dominant US and Mexican cultures.
Chicano/a
The term Chicano refers to people of Mexican (Spanish and Indigenous American) heritage living on the Mexican-American border. Chicano language refers to the forms of Spanish they speak, which include many dialects as well as Spanglish (Spanish that incorporates English words). Anzaldúa highlights the importance of gender inclusivity in language and culture throughout the essay; her first use of the word Chicano/a uses the feminine -a ending (Chicana) to refer to women of this ethnic group.
Code-Switching
Code-switching is the act of talking or writing in more than one language in a single text, sentence, or conversation. It is a common practice in speech between Chicanos, whose language is influenced by both Spanish and English and contains unique elements as well. Using code-switching in the text of her essay allows Anzaldúa to model how Chicanos should embrace rather than be ashamed of their way of communicating. Her sentence, “Nosotros los Chicanos straddle the borderland” (we the Chicanos straddle the borderland), is an example of code-switching in the essay (42).
“Indian”
When Anzaldúa published her essay in 1987, most people used the term “Indian” to refer to the heritage and identities of Indigenous Americans. In Native American communities, conversations about whether the term was derogatory began in the 1970s and 1980s, yet it wasn’t until the 1990s that the derogatory nature of the term became more widely acknowledged. Anzaldúa uses the term to express that Indigenous heritage is an integral part of Chicana culture and that its acknowledgment of Indigenous American roots is a part of why Chicana is considered both a political and a cultural identity.
Mestizo/a
The term mestizo refers to a person of diverse ethnic backgrounds, and Anzaldúa uses it specifically to refer to the hybrid Indigenous American, Spanish, and white identity of Chicanos living on the border. Anzaldúa prefers mestizo or Chicano to Mexican American or Latino because it articulates the specificities of her identity and acknowledges the Indigenous heritage that other terms erase. It is a political term because it incorporates Indigenous heritage and highlights the culturally specific identity of borderland Chicanos.
