76 GLORIA ANZ ALDUA

13Andres Gonza les Guerre ro, [r., The Significance of Nuestro Senora de Guadalupe and La Raza C6slnica in the Development of a Chicano Theology of Liberation (Ann Arb or, MI: u niversity Microfilms International, 1984), 122.

H Algunos dicen que Guadalupe es una palabrndcriuida det tenguaiearabe que significa "Rio Owl/a." Tom ie de Paola, The Lady of Guadalupe (New York, NY: Holiday House, 1980),44.

15 "Desde el cieio una hermosa mafiana," from Propios de la misa de Nuestro Senora de Guadalupe, Guerrero, 124.

" From "La Virgen Ranchera, " Guerrero, 127. 17 La Virgin Maria is often equated with the Aztec Teleoina m, the Maya lx chel, the Inca

Mamacocha, and the Yoruba Yemauti . " Ceoffrey Parrinder, ed.. World Religions: From Ancient History to the Present (New

York, NY: fac ts on File Publications, 1971), 72. 19Levi-Strau ss's paradigm which opposes nature to culture and fema le to male has

no suc h va lidity in the early his tory of ou r Ind ian forebe ars. Jun e Nash, "The Aztecs and the Ideology of Male Dominance," Signs (Winter, 1978), 349.

20 Parrinder, 72. 21 Parrinder. 77. 22 Nas h, 352. 23 Nash, 350, 355. 24 Parrinder, 355. 25 Jacques Soustelle, The Daily Life of the Aztecs on the Eve of the Spanish Conquest (New

York, NY: Macm illan Publ ishing Com pany, 1962). Sous telle and mo st other historians got their information from the Franci scan father, Bernardino de Sahagun, chief chro ni­cler of Indian religious life.

26Nash, 252-253. 27Nash, 358. 28 Nash, 361- 362. 29 Ka rl W. Luckert, Olmec Religion: A Key to Middle America and Bcqond (Norman, OK:

Uni versity of Oklahoma Press, 1976), 68, 69, 87,109. 3O Bernard ino de Sahagun, General History of the Things of New Spain (Florentine

Codex), Vol. [ Revised , trans. Ar th ur And erson and Charles Dibble (Sante Fe, NM: School of American Research, 1950), I I.

31The Aztecs muted Snake Woman's patrona ge of chi ld bir th and vegeta tion by plac­ing a sacrificial knife in the empty cradle she carr ied on her back (signifying a ch ild who died in childbirth ), thereby making her a dev ou rer of sacrificial victim s. Snak e Woman had the abi lity to cha nge herself into a serp en t or into a lovely young woman to entice you ng men , who wit hered aw ay and d ied after inte rcourse with her. She was known as a witch and a shape-shifter. Brun da ge, 168-17I.

32Anthropologis t Lucien Levy-Bruh l coined the word participation mystique. Accord­ing to [ung. " It denotes a peculiar kind of psychological connec tion ... [in which] the subject canno t clear ly dis ting uish himself from the objec t bu t is bound to it by a d irec t relationship wh ich amo un ts to partial iden tity." Carl jung, "Definitions," in Psychological Types, The ColJected Works of C. G. lu ng, Vol. 6 (Princeton, NJ: Pr inceton Univ ersity Press, 1953), pa r. 78I.

" 1have lost the source of th is quote. If anyone knows what it is, p lease let the pub­lisher kno w. [Aut hor 's note]

" Some mexicanos and Chicanos dis ting uish betwee n aire, air, and mal aigre, the evi l spi ri ts which res ide in the air.

How to Tame a Wild Tongue

"We're go ing to have to control yo ur tongue," the de ntist says, pulling ou t all the metal from my mo uth. Silver bits plop and tinkle into the bas in. My mouth is a mot herlode.

The dentist is cleaning ou t my roots. I ge t a whiff of the stench when I gas p. "I can't cap that toot h yet, you ' re still d raining," he says.

"We're going to have to do someth ing about yo ur tongue," I hear the anger rising in his vo ice. My ton gue keeps pushing out the wads of cotton, pushing back the d rills, the lon g thin needles. "I've ne ver seen any th ing as s trong or as stubborn," he says. And I think, how do you tame a wild tongue, train it to be quiet, how do you bridle and sad d le it? How do you make it lie down?

Who is to say that robbing a people of its language is less violen t than war?

- RAY GWYN SMfTH]

I remember being caught speaking Spanish at recess-that was good for th ree licks on the knuckles wi th a sharp rul er. I remember being sent to the corner of the class room for "talking back" to the Ang lo teacher when all I was trying to do was tell her how to pron ounce my na me. "If you wa n t to be American, speak'American.' If you don' t like it, go back to Mexico where you belong."

"I want you to speak English . Fa' hallar buen trabajo tienes que saber hablar el Ingles bien. Que vale toda tu educacion si todaoia hablas ingles con un 'accent,' '' my mother wo uld say, mortified tha t I spoke English like a Mexican. At Pan American University, I and all Chicano stude nts were required to take two speech classes. Their purpose: to get rid of our accents.

Attacks on one's form of expression wi th the intent to censor are a vio­lation of the Firs t Amendment. EI Anglo con cara de inocente nos arranco la lengua. Wild tongues can' t be tamed, they can on ly be cut out.

Overcoming the Tradition of Silence

Ahogadas, escupimos el oscuro. Peleando con nuestra propia sombre el silencio nos sepulta.

En boca cerrada no eniran moscas. "Flies don't enter a closed mouth" is a saying I kept hearing when I was a child . Ser habladora was to be a gossip and a liar, to talk too mu ch. Muchachitas biencriadas, well-bred girls don't answer back. Es una [alta de respeto to talk back to one's mother or father. I remember one of the sins I'd recite to the priest in the confess ion box the few times I

78 GLORIA ANZ\LDU A HoWtoTame a Wild Tongue 79-wen t to confession: talkin g back to my mo ther, hablar pa' 'tras, repelar. Hocio­cona, repelona, chismosa. hav ing a big mouth , questioning, carrying tales are all signs of being mal criada. In my culture they are all words that are deroga­tory if applied to women-I've never heard them applied to men.

The first tim e I hear d two women, a Puerto Rican and a Cuban, say the word "nosoiras," I was shocked. I had no t known the word existed . Chi­canas use nosotros whe ther we 're male or female. We are rob bed of our female being by the masc uline plural. Language is a male discourse.

And our tongues have become dr y the wilde rness has dried out our tongues and we have forgotten speech.

2 - JREN A KLEPFfS7

Even our own people, othe r Span ish spea kers nos quieren poner canda­dos en ia boca. They would ho ld us back with thei r bag of reglasde academia.

aye como ladra: ellenguaje de la frontera

Quien tiene boca se equiooca. - Mexican saying

"Poche, cultural traitor, you 're spea king the oppressor's language by speaking English , you're ruining the Spanish lan gu age," I have been ac­cuse d by various Latinos and Latinas. Ch icano Span ish is considered by the purist and by mo st Latinos deficient, a mutilation of Spanish.

But Chicano Spani sh is a border tungu e which developed naturally. Change, euolucion, enriquecimienio de palabras nuevas por inuencum 0 adopcion have created variants of Chi cano Spa nish, un nuevo lenguaie. Un lenguaje que corresponde a un modo de vivir. Chic ano Spanish is not incorrect, it is a living language.

For a peopl e who are neither Spani sh nor live in a country in which Spanish is the firs t lang uage; for a people who live in a country in which English is the reig ning tongue but who are not Anglo; for a people who canno t enti rely ide ntify w ith either standa rd (formal, Cas tilian) Spanish nor standard English, what recou rse is left to the m but to crea te their ow n language? A lan gu age which they can connect their ide ntity to, one capa­ble of communicating the realities an d values tru e to themselves-a lan­guag e with term s that are neither espaiiol ni ingles, but both. We spe ak a pa tois, a forked ton gue, a va riation of two langu ag es.

Ch icano Spanish sprang ou t of the Chican os' need to identify our­selves as a dist inct people. We nee de d a language with w hich we could communicate with ourselves, a secret language. For some of us, lan gu age is a homeland closer than the Southwest-for many Chicanos today live in the Midwest and the East. And because we are a complex, heterogeneous pe.2Ele,~e speak many languages. Some of the languages we speak are

1. Standard English 2. Working-class and slang English 3. Standard Spa nish 4. Standard Mexican Spanish 5. North Mexican Spanish di alect 6. Chicano Spanish (Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, and Ca liforn ia ha ve

regional variations) 7. Tex-Mex 8. Pachuco (called cala)

My "home" tongues are the languages [ speak with my sister and broth­ers, with my friend s. They are the last five listed, with 6 and 7 being closest to my heart. From schoo l, the media, and job situations, I've picked up stan­dard and working-class English. From Mam agrande Locha an d from read­ing Spanish and Mexican literatu re, I've p icked up Standard Spanish and Standard Mexican Spanish. From los recien llegados, Mexican immigrants, and braceros, I learned the North Mexican dialect. With Mexicans I'll try to speak either Standard Mexican Spanish or the North Mexican d ialect. From my parents and Chicanos living in the Valley, I p icked up Chica no Texas Spanish, and I speak it wi th my mom, younger brother (who married a Mexican and who rare ly mixes Spanish with English) , aunts, and older relatives.

With Chicanas from Nuevo Mexico or Arizona I will spea k Chican o Span­ish a Li ttle, but often they don't understand what I'm saying. With mos t Cal­ifornia Chicanas I speak enti rely in English (unless I forget). Whe n I first moved to San Francisco, I'd rattle off something in Spanish , unintentionally embarrassing them. Often it is only with another Chicana tejano that I can talk freely.

Words d istorted by Eng lish are known as ang licisms or poehismos. The pocho is an anglicized Mexican or American of Mexican origin w ho speaks Spanish with an accent characteristic of No rth Americans and who distorts and reconstructs the lan guage according to the influence of English. ' Tex­Mex, or Spanglish, comes most naturally to me. I may switch back and forth from English to Spanish in the same sentence or in the same wo rd . With my sis ter and my brother NW1e and with Ch icano tejano contem po raries I speak in Tex-Me x.

From kids and people my own age I p icked up Pachuco. Pachuco (the language of the zoo t suiters) is a lan gu age of rebellion , both against Stan­dard Spanish and Standard English. It is a secret language . Adults of the culture and outsiders cann ot understand it. It is made up of slang words from both Engli sh and Spanish. Ruca means girl or wom an , vato means guy or dude , chale mean s no, simon mean s yes, churro is su re, tal k is periquiar, pigionear mea ns petting, que gacho means how nerdy, ponte aguila means watch out, death is called la pelona. Through lack of practice and not having others who can speak it, I've lost most of the Pachu co tongue.

80 G LORIA ANZALDUA --HoWto Tame a Wild Tongue 81

Chicano Spanish

Chican os, after 250 years of Spanish / Anglo colonization, have devel­oped significant differences in the Spanish we speak. We colla pse two adja cent vowels into a sing le syllab le and some times sh ift the stress in cer­tain words su ch as maiz/maiz, coheie/cueie. We leave out certain consonants when the y appear between vowe ls: lado/tao, mojado/mojao. Ch icanos from South Texas pronounce f as j as in jue (jue). Chican os use "a rchai sms," words that are no lon ger in the Span ish langu age, words that have been evol ved out. We say semos, truje, haiga, ansina, and naiden. We retain the "archaic" j, as in jalar, that deri ves from an earlier h (the French halar or the Germanic halon which was lost to s tandard Spa nish in the sixteenth cen­tury), but which is still found in seve ral regional dialects such as the one spoken in South Texas. (Due to geography , Ch icanos from the Valley of South Texas were cut off lingui stically from other Spanish speakers. We tend to use words that the Spaniards brought over from Medieval Spain. The majority of the Spanish coloni zers in Mexico an d the Southwest came from Extremadura-s-Hernan Cortes was one of the m-and Andalucia. Andalucians pronounce II like a y, and their d's tend to be abso rbed by ad­jacent vowels: tirado becom es tirao. They brought el lenguaje popular, dialec­tos y regionalismos.)4

Chicanos and other Spani sh speakers also shift II to y and z to S.5 We leave out initial syllables, saying tar for esiar, toy for es tou, hora for ahara (cubanos and puertorriqueiios also leave out initial lett ers of some words). We also leave ou t the fina l syllable such as pa for para. The intervocalic y, the II as in tortilla, ella, botella, gets rep laced by tortia or ioriva, ea, botea. We add an additional sylla ble at the beginn ing of cer tain words: atocar for tocar, agas tar for gastar. Sometimes we'll say lavaste las vacijas, othe r times lavates (subs tituting the ates ve rb end ings for the aste).

We use ang licisms, wo rds borrow ed from English: bola from ba ll, car­peta from carpet, mdchina de lauar (ins tead of lavadora) from washing ma­chine. Tex-Mex argo t, crea ted by adding a Spanish sound at the beginning or end of an Eng lish word suc h as cookiar for cook , toatchar for wa tch, parkiar for par k, an d rapiar for rap e, is the result of the p ressures on Span ­ish speakers to adapt to English.

We don 't use the wo rd vosotros/as or its accompa ny ing verb form. We don't say claro (to mea n yes) , imaginate, or me emociona, unless w e picked up Spanish from Latinas, ou t of a book, or in a classroom . Other Spanish­speaking groups are go ing thr ou gh the same, or similar, development in their Spanish.

Linguistic Terrorism

Deslengu adas. Somas los del espaii ol deft cient e. We are your linguis­tic nightm are, your linguistic aberration, your linguistic mesti­saje, the subject of your burla. Because we speak with tongues of

fire we are cultura lly crucified. Racially, culturally, and linguis­tically somas hw!rfanos-we speak an orpha n tongue .

Chicanas who grew up speaking Chicano Spanish have internalized the belief that we speak poor Spanish. It is illegitimate, a bas tard lan guage. And becau se we in terna lize how our lan guage has been used agains t us by the dominant culture, we use our lang uage dif ferences against each other.

Chicana feminists often skir t around each other with suspicion and hesi­tation. For the longest time I couldn' t figure it ou t. Then it dawned on me . To be close to another Chicana is like looking into the mirror. We are afraid of what we'll see there. Pena. Shame. Low estima tion of self. In childhood we are told that our language is w rong. Repeated attacks on our native tongue diminish our sense of self. The attacks contin ue throu ghout our lives.

Chicanas feel unc omfortable talking in Spani sh to Latinas, afraid of their censure. Their language was not outlaw ed in their countries. They had a whole lifetime of being immersed in their native tongue; genera­tions, centuries in which Spanish was a first lan gu age, taught in school, heard on radio and TV, and read in the newspaper.

If a person, Chicana or Latina, has a low estimation of my native tongue, she also has a low estimation of me. Often with mexicanas y laiinas we'l l speak English as a neutral lan gu age. Even among Chicanas we tend to speak English at pa rties or conferences . Yet, at the same tim e, we're afraid the other w ill th ink we'r e agringadas becau se we don't speak Chi­cano Spanish. We oppress each other trying to ou t-Ch icano each other, vying to be the "real" Chica nas , to speak like Ch icanos. There is no one Chicano language just as the re is no one Ch ican o expe rience. A monolin­gual Chi cana w hose first language is Eng lish or Spa nish is jus t as much a Chicana as one who spea ks several varian ts of Spa nish . A Chicana from Michigan or Chicago or Detro it is just as much a Chicana as one from the Southwest. Chicano Spanish is as di verse ling uis tically as it is regiona lly.

By the end of this cen tury, Span ish speakers will compr ise the biggest minority group in the United Sta tes, a coun try w here students in high schools and colleges are enco uraged to take French classes because French is conside red more "culture d. " But for a lan gu age to remain alive it must be used." By the end of th is cen tury English, an d not Spani sh , wi ll be the mother tongue of most Chicanos and Latinos.

So, if you wa nt to really hurt me, talk badly about my language. Ethnic identity is twin skin to linguistic identity-l am my language. Until I can take pride in my lan gu age, rcannot take pride in myself. Until I can accept as legitimate Chicano Texas Spani sh , Tex-Mex, and all the other languages I speak, r cannot accept the legitimacy of myself. Until I am free to write bilingually and to switch codes wi thout having always to translate, while r still have to sp eak English or Spanish when I would rather speak Spang­lish, and as long as I have to accommodate the English speaker rather than having them accommodate me, my tongue will be illegitimate.

82 GLORIA A N ZALDUA HoWto Tame a Wild Tongue 83

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 traditi on of silence.

My fingers move sly against your palm Like women everywhere, we speak in code..

- MFI.AN1E KAYE/ KANTROWITZ?

"Vistas," corridos, y comida: My Native Tongue

In the 19605, I read my first Chicano novel. It was City of Night by John Rechy, a gay Texan, son of a Scottish father and a Mexican mother. For da ys I walked around in stunne d amazement tha t a Chicano cou ld wr ite and could get published . When I read [ AJ"n Joaqufn8 I was surprised to see a biling ual book by a Chicano in print. When I saw poetry wr itten in TexMex for the first time, a feeling of pure joy flashed through me. I felt like we re­ally existed as a peo ple. In 1971, when I started teaching High Schoo l Eng­lish to Chicano students, I tried to supplement the required texts wi th works by Chicanos, onJy to be reprimanded and forbidden to do so by the principal. He claimed that I was supposed to teach "American" and Eng ­lish litera ture. At the risk of being fired , I swore my stude n ts to secrecy and slipped in Chicano short stories, poems, a p lay. In grad ua te school, while working toward a Ph .D., I had to "argue" with one adv iser after the othe r, semester after semes ter, before I was allowe d to make Chicano literature an area of focus.

Even before I read books by Chicanos or Mexicans, it was the Mexican movies I saw at the dr ive-in-the Thursday night special of $1.00 a carload­that gave me a sense of belonging. "Vamonos a las vistas," my mother would call ou t and we'd all-grandmother, brothers, sister, and cousins-squeeze into the car. We'd wo lf down cheese and bologna white bread sandwiches whi le watching Ped ro Infante in melodram atic tearjerkers like Nosotros los pobres, the first "real" Mexican movie (tha t was not an imi tation of Euro­pean movies). I rememb er see ing Cuando los hijos se van and surmising that all Mexican movies played up the love a mother has for her children and wha t un gra tefu l sons and dau ghters su ffer when they are not devoted to their mothers. I remember the singing- type "westerns" of Jorge Negrete and Miqu el Aceves Mejia. When wa tch ing Mexican movies, I felt a sense of homecoming as well as alienation. People who we re to amo unt to some­thin g didn' t go to Mexican movies, or bailes, or tune their radios to bolero, rancheriia, and corrido music.

The whole time I was grow ing up, there was norie ii o music some times called No rth Mexican border mu sic, or Tex-Mex music, or Chicano music, or cantina (bar) music. I grew up listening to conjuntos, three- or four-piece bands mad e up of folk musicians p laying guitar, bajo sexto, drums, and

button accordio n, which Chicanos had borrowed from the Germa n immi ­gran ts w ho had come to Centra l Texas and Mexico to farm and bui ld brew­eries. In the Rio Gra nde Valley, Steven Jord an and Little Joe Hern andez were popular, and F1aco Jimene z was the acco rdio n king. The rhythms of Tex-Mex mu sic are those of the po lka, also ad apted from the Germans, who in turn had borrow ed the polka from the Czechs and Bohemi ans.

I remember the hot, su ltry evenings when corridos-song of love and death on the Texas-Mexican borderlands-reverberated out of cheap ampli­fiers from the local cantinas and wafted in through my bed room window.

Corridos first became wide ly used along the South Texas/Mexican bor­der du ring the early conflict between Chicanos and Anglos. The corridos are usually about Mexican heroes who do valiant deeds aga inst the Anglo op­pressors. Pancho Villa's song, "La cucaracha," is the most famo us one. Corri­dos of John F. Kennedy and his death are still very popular in the Valley. Older Chicanos rememb er Lydia Mendoza, one of the grea t border corrido singers wh o was called ia Gloriade Tejas. Her "EI tango negro," sung during the Grea t Depression, made her a singer of the people. The ever-present corridos narr ated one hundred years of border history, bringing news of events as well as entertaining. These folk musicians and folk songs are our chief cu ltu ra l mythmakers, and they made our ha rd lives seem bearable.

I grew up feeling ambiva lent about our music. Country-western and rock-and-roll had more status. In the fifties and sixties, for the slightly ed u­cated and agringado Chicanos, there existed a sense of sha me a t being caught listenin g to our music. Yet I coul dn ' t stop my feet from thumping to the mu sic, could not stop humming the words, nor hid e from myself the exhilaration I felt when I heard it.

There are more subtle ways that we internalize ide ntification, especially in the forms of images and emotions. For me food and certain smells are tied to my iden tity, to my homeland . Wood smoke curling up to an immense blue sky; woo dsmo ke perfuming my grandmo the r's clothes, her skin. The stench of cow manure and the yellow patches on the groun d; the crack of a .22 rifle and the reek of cordi te. Homemade white cheese sizzling in a pan, melting inside a folded tortilla . My sister Hilda's ho t, spicy menudo, chile colorado makin g it deep red, pieces of panza and hominy floa ting on top. My bro ther Carito barbequing fajitas in the backy ard . Even now and 3,000 miles away, I can see my mother spicing the ground beef, pork, and venison with chile. My mouth saliva tes at the though t of the hot steaming tamales I would be eating if I were home.

Si le preguntas a mi mama, "l- Que eres?"

Identity is the essential core of who we are as indiv iduals, the conscious experience of the self inside.

- GERSHEN KAUFMA N9

84 GLORIA A N ZALDUA HoW to Tamea Wild Tongue 85 -Nosotros Los Chicanos straddle the borderlands. On one side of us, 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. Among ourselves we don't say nosotros los americanos, 0 nosotros los espaiioles, 0

nosotros los hispanos. We say nosotros los mexicanos (by mexicanos we do not mean citizens of Mexico; we do not mean a national identity, but a racial one). We distinguish between mexicanos del otro lado and mexicanos de este lado. Deep in our hearts we believe that being Mexican has nothing to do with which country one lives in. Being Mexican is a state of soul-not one of mind, not one of citizenship. Neither eagle nor serpent, but both. And like the ocean, neither animal respects borders.

Dime can quien andas y Ie dire quien eres. (Tell me who your friends are and I'll tell you who you are.)

- Mexican saying

Si le preguntasa mi mama, ": Que eres?" te dird, "Soy mexicana." My broth­ers and sister say the same. I sometimes will answer "soy mexicana'' and at others will say "soy Chicana" 0 "soy tejana." But I identified as "Raza" before I ever identified as "mexicana'' or "Chicana."

As a culture, we call ourselves Spanish when referring to ourselves as a linguistic group and when copping out. It is then that we forget our pre­dominant Indian genes. We are 70-80 percent Indian. lO We call ourselves Hispanic!' or Spanish-American or Latin American or Latin when linking ourselves to other Spanish-speaking peoples of the Western hemisphere and when copping out. We call ourselves Mexican-Americanv to signify we are neither Mexican nor American, but more the noun"American" than the adjective "Mexican" (and when copping out).

Chicanos and other people of color suffer economically for not accultur­ating. This voluntary (yet forced) alienation makes for psychological con­flict, a kind of dual identity-we don't identify with the Anglo-American cultural values and we don't totally identify with the Mexican cultural val­ues. We are a synergy of two cultures with various degrees of Mexicanness or Angloness. I have so internalized the borderland conflict that some­times I feel like one cancels out the other and we are zero, nothing, no one. A veces no soy nada ni nadie. Pero hasia cuandono 10 soy, 10 soy.

When not copping out, when we know we are more than nothing, we call ourselves Mexican, referring to race and ancestry; mestizo when affirm­ing both our Indian and Spanish (but we hardly ever own our Black) ances­try; Chicano when referring to a politically aware people born and/or raised in the United States; Raza when referring to Chicanos; tejanos when we are Chicanos from Texas.

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 party was formed in Texas. With that recognition, we became a distinct people. Something momentous happened to the Chicano soul-we became aware of our reality and acquired a name and a language (Chicano

Spanish) that reflected that reality. Now that we had a name, some of the fragmented pieces began to fall together-who we were, what we were, how we had evolved. We began to get glimpses of what we might eventu­

ally become. Yet the struggle of identities continues, the struggle of borders is our

reality still. One day the inner struggle will cease and a true integration take place. In the meantime, ienemos que hacer la lucha. (. Quien esta proie­giendo los ranchos de mi gente? (. Quien estCi tratando de cerrar La [isura entre la indiay 1'1 blanco en nuestra sangre? EI Chicano, si, el Chicano que anda como un uaro« en su propia casa.

LosChicanos, how patient we seem, how very patient. There is the quiet of the Indian about usY We know how to survive. When other races have given up their tongue we've kept ours. We know what it is to live under the hammer blow of the dominant norieamericano culture. But more than we count the blows, we count the days the weeks the years the centuries the aeons until the white laws and commerce and customs will rot in the deserts they've created, lie bleached. Humildes yet proud, quietos yet wild, nosotros los mexicanos-Chicanos will walk by the crumbling ashes as we go about our business. Stubborn, persevering, impenetrable as stone, yet pos­sessing a malleability that renders us unbreakable, we, the mestizas and mestizos, will remain.

NOTES

1Ray Gwyn Smith, Moorland Is Cold Country, unpublished book. ' Irena Klepfisz, "Di rayze aheym/The Journey Home," in The Tribe of Dina: A Jewish

Women's Anthology, Melanie Kaye/Kantrowitz and Irena Klepfisz, eds. (Montpelier, VT: Sinister Wisdom Books, 1986), 49.

3R. C. Ortega, Dialcctotogia Del Barrio, trans. Hortencia S. Alwan (Los Angeles, CA: R. C. Ortega Publisher & Bookseller, 1977), 132.

'Eduardo Hernandez-Chavez, Andrew D. Cohen, and Anthony F. Beltramo, EI Lenguaje de los Chicanos: Regional and Social Characteristics of Language Used by Mexican Americans (Arlington, VA: Center for Applied Linguistics, 1975),39.

sHernandez-Chavez, xvii. 6Irena Klepfisz, "Secular Jewish Identity: Yidishkayt in America," in The Tribe of

Dina, Kaye/Kantrowitz and Klepfisz, eds., 43. 7Melani e Kaye/Kantrowitz, "Sign," in We Speak in Code: Poems and Other Writings

(Pittsburgh, PA: Motheroot Publications, Inc., 1980), 85. 8Rodolfo Gonzales, I Am Joaquin/Yo Soy Joaquin (New York, NY: Bantam Books,

1972). It was first published in 1967. 9 Gershen Kaufman, Shame: The Powerof Caring (Cambridge, 'VIA: Schenkman Books,

Inc ., 1980), 68.

lOJohn R. Chavez, The Lost Land: The Chicano Images of the Southwest (Albuquerque, NM : University of New Mexico Press, 1984), 88-90.

II "Hispanic" is derived from Hispanis (Espana, a name given to the Iberian Penin­sula in ancient times when it was a part of the Roman Empire) and is a term designated by the Ll.S.government to make it easier to handle us on paper.

1'The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo created the Mexican-American in 1848. 13 Anglos, in order to alleviate their guilt for dispossessing the Chicano, stressed the

Spanish part of us and perpetrated the myth of the Spanish Southwest. We have accepted

86 G LORIA ANZALDUA Entering into the Serpent/How to Tame a Wild T011gue 87 -the fiction that we are Hispanic, that is Spanish, in order to accommodate ourselves to the dominant culture and its abhorrence of Indians. Chavez, 88-91.

QUES TIONS FOR A SECO ND READI NG

1. The mos t immediate challenge to ma ny readers of these chap ters will be the sec tions that are wr itten in Spanish. Part of the point of a text that mixes languages is to give non-Spa nish-speaking read ers the feeling of bein g lost, excluded , left ou t. Wha t is a reader to do with this prose? One cou ld learn Spanish and come back to reread, bu t this is not a quick solu­tion and, according to Anzaldua, not even a completely sa tisfactory one, since some of her Spanish is drawn from communities of speakers not rep­resented in textbooks and classes.

So how do you read this text if you don't read Spanish? Do you ignore the words? sound them out? improvise? Anza ldua gives tra ns lations of some words or phrases, but not all. Which ones does she transla te? Why? Reread these chapters with the goal of explaining how you handled An­zaldua's po lyglot style.

2. These chapters are made up of shor ter sec tions written in a variety of sty les (some as prose poems, some with endnotes, some as stor ies). And, while the secti ons are obv ious ly ordered, the order is no t a conventional argumentative one . The text is, as Anzaldua says elsew here in her book, "an asse mblage, a montage, a beaded work, . . . a crazy dance":

In looking at this book tha t I'm almost finished w ritin g, I see a mosaic pattern (Aztec-like) emerging , a wea ving pattern, th in here, th ick there. . . . This alm ost finished product seem s an assemblage, a mon­tage, a beaded work with several leitmotifs and wi th a cen tra l core, now appear ing, now d isappearing in a craz y dance. The whole thin g has had a mind of its own, escaping me and insisting on putting together the p ieces of its own pu zzle with minimal direc tion from my will. It is a re­bellious, willful enti ty, a pr ecocious girl-child forced to grow up too quickly, rough, un yield ing, w ith pieces of feather stickin g out here and there, fur, twig s, d ay. My child, bu t not for much longer. This fema le being is angry, sad , joyful, is Coat licue, dove , horse, serp ent, cactus. Though it is a flawed thin g-s-clum sy. comp lex, groping, blind thing, for me it is alive, infused wi th spirit. I talk to it; it talks to me.

This is not, in other words, a conventional text; it makes unexpected de­mands on a reader. As you reread, mark sections you could use to talk about how, through the text, Anzaldua invents a reader and / or a way of reading. Who is Anzaldua's ideal reader? Wha t does he or she need to be able to do?

3. Altho ugh Anzaldua 's text is not a conventional one, it makes an argument and proposes term s and examples for its readers to negotiate. How might you summarize Anzaldua's argument in these two chapters? How do the individual chapters mark stages or parts of her argument? How might you

explain the connections between the chapters? As you reread this selection, mark those passa ges where Anza ldua seems to you to be creating a case or argu ment. Wha t are its key terms? its key exam ples? its conclusions?

ASSIG NMENTS FO R WRITING

1. Anzaldua has described her text as a kind of crazy dance (see the second "Question for a Second Reading"); it is, she says, a text with a mind of its own, "putting together the pieces of its own puzzle with minimal dir ection from my will." Hers is a prose full of variety and seeming contradictions; it is a wr iting that could be said to rep resent the cultural "cro ssroads" which is her experience/sensibility.

As an experiment whose goal is the dev elop ment of an alternate (in Anz aldua's terms, a mixed or mestiza) understanding, write an autobio­graphical text whose shape and motives could be described in her terms: a mosaic, woven, with numerous overlays; a montage, a beaded work, a crazy dance, drawing on the various ways of thinking, speaking, under­standing that mig ht be said to be part of your own mixed cultural position, your own mixed sensibility.

To prepare for this essa y, thin k about the different positions yo u could be said to occup y, the diffe rent voices that are part of your background or pr esen t, the competing ways of thinking that make up your poi nts of view. Imagine that your goa l is to pr esent your world and your exp erience to those who are not necessarily prepared to be sympathe tic or to understand . And, following Anzaldua, you should work to construct a mixed text, not a single un ified one. This will be hard, since you will be wri tin g wha t might be called a "forbidden" text, one you have no t been prepared to write.

2. In "La conciencia de fa mestiza/Towa rds a New Consciousness," the last essayLike chapter in her boo k (the remaining chapters are made up of poems), Anzaldua steps forward to define her role as writer and yours as reader. She says, among other things,

Many women and men of color do not want to have any dealings with white people. . .. Many feel that whites shou ld help the ir own peop le rid themselves of race hatr ed and fear first. I, for one, choose to use some of my energy to serve as mediator. 1 think we need to allow whites to be our allies. Through our literature, art, corridos, and folk­tales we mus t share our his tory with them so wh en they set up com­mittees to help Big Mountain Nava jos or the Chicano Iarmworkers or los Nicaragiienses they won' t tum people away becau se of their racial fears an d ignorances. The y will come to see that they a re not helping us bu t following our lead .

Individually, but also as a racial en tity, we need to vo ice our needs. We need to say to white society: We need you to accep t the fact that Chicanos are diffe rent, to acknowledge your reject ion and nega tion of us . We need you to own the fact that you looked up on us as less than human , that you stole our lands, our personhood, our self-respect. We need you to make pub lic res titu tion: to say that, to compensate for your own sens e of defectiveness, you strive for power over us, you erase our history and ou r experience because it makes you feel guilty-you'd

--88� G LORIA A NZALDUA Entering into the Serpent/How to Tame a Wild Tongue 89

rather forget your bru tish acts. To say you've sp lit yourself from mi­nority gro ups , that you diso wn us, that your d ua l consciousness spli ts off pa rts of yourself, transferr ing the "nega tive " parts onto us. . . To say that you are afraid of us, that to pu t d istance be tween us, yo u wear the mask of con temp t. Adm it that Mexico is your do uble, that she ex­is ts in the shadow of this cou n try, tha t we are irrevocab ly tied to her. Gringo, accept the doppelgan ger in you r psyche. By taking back your collecti ve shadow the intracultural sp lit will heal. And finally, tell us what you need from us.

This is only a part of the text-one of the ways it defines the roles of reader and writer-but it is one that asks to be taken account of, with its insistent list of wh at a white reader must do and say. (Of course not eve ry reader is white, and not all whi te readers are the sam e. What An zald ua is defining here is a "white" way of reading.)

Write an essay in wh ich you tell a story of read ing, the s tory of yo ur work with the tw o chap ters of Bordertands/La [rontera repri n ted here. Think about where yo u felt at home with the text and where you felt lost, where you knew wh at you were doing and where you needed help ; think about the positi on (or positions) you have taken as a reader and how it measures up aga ins t the ways An zaldua has figu red you in the text, the ways she ha s anticipa ted a resp onse, imagined who you are and how you habi tually thin k and rea d.

3.� In "How to Tame a Wild Tongue" (p. 77), Anza ld ua says, "I will no longer be made to feel ashamed of existing. I w ill have my voice: Indian , Spanish, wh ite. I will have my serpent's tongue-my woman' s voice, my sexual voice, my po et' s vo ice." Anzaldua sp eaks almost casually about "having her voice," not a single, "authentic" voice, but one she names in these terms: Indian, Spani sh, white; woman, lesb ian , poet. What is "vo ice" as de­fined by these chapters? Where does it come from ? What does it have to do wi th the act of wri ting or the wr iter?

As you reread these cha pters, mar k those passages that you think bes t represent Anza ld ua's voices . Using thes e passages as examples, wri te an essay in wh ich yo u discuss how these voices are di fferent-both d ifferent from one an other and d ifferent from a "standard " voice (as a "standard " voice is imagined by Anzald ua). What do these voices represent? How do they figure in you r reading? in her writing?

4. Anzald ua's writing is difficult to cate gori ze as an essay or a s tory or a poem; it has all of these within it. The wr iting may appear to have been jus t put togeth er, but it is more likely that it was carefully crafted to repre­sen t the va rious vo ices Anzaldua understands to be a part of her. She speaks d irectly about her voices-her woman's voice, her sexual voice, her poet' s voice; her Ind ian, Spanish, and white voices on page 82 of "How to Tame a Wild Ton gu e."

Following Anzald ua, write an argument of your own, one that re­quires you to use a variety of voices, in wh ich you carefully present the various voices that yo u feel are a part of you or a part of the argument.

When you have com pleted this assignment, write a two-page essay in which you explain why the arg ument you mad e might be worth a reader's at ten tion.

MAKING CONNECTIONS

1.� In "Arts of the Contact Zone" (p. 517), Mary Louise Pratt talks abou t the "autoethnographic" text, "a text in which people undertake to describe themselves in ways tha t engage wi th rep resen tations othe rs have made of them," and abo ut " transcul turation," the "processes whereby members of subordinated or marginal groups select and invent from materials trans­mitted by a dominant or metropolitan culture."

Writ e an essay in which you present a reading of these two cha p ters as an example of an autoethn ograp hic and/or transcultural text. You should imagine that yo u are writing to someone w ho is not familiar wi th either Pratt's argu men t or Anz ald ua's book. Part of your work, then , is to pr e­sent Anzaldua 's text to read ers w ho don' t have it in front of them . You hav e the example of Pratt's reading of Guaman Porna 's New Chronicleand Good Government. And you ha ve her d iscussion of the "litera te ar ts of the contact zon e." Think about how Anza ld ua's text might be sim ilarly read, and about how her text does and doesn' t fit Pratt's description. Your goal should be to add an example to Pratt's d iscussion and to qu ali fy it, to give her discussion a new twist or spi n now that you ha ve had a chance to look at an additional example.

2.� Both Adrienne Rich in "When We Dead Awaken: Writing as Re-Vision" (p . 538) and Gloria Anzald ua in these two chap ters cou ld be said to be writing about the same issues-writing , identity, gender, history. Both texts contain an arg ument; both, in their peculiar styles, enact an arg ument­they demonstr ate how and why one migh t need to revise the usu al ways of writing. Identify what you understand to be the key points, the key terms, and the key examples in each selection.

Beginning wi th the passages yo u have identified, write an essay in which you examine the similarities and di fferences in these two texts. Look particularly for the di fferences, since they are harder to find and harder to explain. Consider the selections as marking d ifferent posi tions on wri ting, identity, politics, history. Ho w might you account for these differences (if they represent more than the fact that d ifferent people are likely to d iffer)? How are these d ifferences significant?