First Response to "How to Tame a Wild Tongue"

I can see the child wiggling on the dentist seat as the dentist tries to work on her teeth. Struggling to keep the tongue out of the way, while the child wonders in bewilderment, "What I am supposed to do to control my tongue."


I never thought of language as an identity. To me it was just a way to communicate to others, not something that defined who you are. As I read of the young girl speaking in Spanish at recess I could see her bewilderment at the punishment, just like the child in the dentists office. Wondering what they had done wrong and what they could do to change something that had its own life within them.


Anzaldua talks about the people she grew up with and their struggle to find an identity for themselves. This struggle was making them isolated from everyone around them. They didn't speak proper Spanish so the Mexicans disowned them and they couldn't speak proper English so the Americans disowned them too. This left them lost and forgotten. They where no one. they where nothing. They were stuck in the middle and clammed by neither side.

Anzaldua struggle to own her language, her identity. This was not an easy struggle. She fought for it again and again, always trying to break free of the bonds that both sides had put on her.

I think that this struggle is going on though out the writing, the Spanish is fighting with the English to gain control of the essay. Yet, Anzaldua makes them work together, complimenting and strengthening one another. Just as she believes that by accepting each other all sides can be strengthened.