Chicano

In "How to Tame a Wild Tongue" Gloria Anzuldua describes her experience as a Chicana. Anzuldua explains that chicanos, or Americans with a Mexican heritage, feel anxiety in finding their cultural identity; she writes that "Chicanos straddle the borderlands" (62) to represent this internal struggle. In an attempt to communicate the strength of their ties to Mexico she writes "Being Mexican is a state of the soul-not one of mind, not one of citizenship" (62). However, Anzuldua's critique of cultural identity goes beyond describing the tension and reveals the greater cultural problems behind it. She explains that American culture is a harsh bias one when she writes that "We know what it is to live under the hammer blow of the dominant norteamericano culture" (63).



Jacob Erickson