The readying “How to Tame a Wild Tongue” by Gloria Anzaldua it was a little difficult for me to read, there was a lot of Mexican sayings, most of them were in Spanish, but even if I speak Spanish sometimes it was hard for me to understand some of the sayings. For instance “Ahogadas, escupimos al oscuro. Peleando con nuestra propia sombra el silencio nos sepulta” (103). After Anzaldua writes the saying and then in the paragraph that follows the saying explains a little how that saying relates to her or her life. It took me a while to figure out the meaning of this saying. At first I was readying over and over those same lines, but I just could not understand, then I just when ahead and start readying the paragraph. I finished the whole story and then I came back to read that same saying. Then I read the following paragraph again then that was when my bulb turned on. When I saw the subtitle that said “The Tradition Of Silence”(103) gave me the entire understanding of the saying. There, in the saying she’s talking about the women, that when they can’t take it anymore, that they feel that that’s all they can take and that they need to explode, that’s when they feel ahogadas which means drowned and escupimos al oscuro means we spit to the dark, which is referring that they just say what they have all inside without realizing to how they are saying it or who is around them. Peleando con nuestra propia sombra el silencio nos sepulta is fighting with our own shadow the silence bury us, meaning that if they stay quiet and they just keep it to themselves then that of course we know that little by little would start making a negative impact in their lives. Although some saying I could not understand nor interpret them the story gave me an understanding of the point Anzaldua wanted to get across. There was many things in the story that I didn’t understood at once, so it required me to go for a second read. One of the things that required me to go and read it again was that Chicanos speak many languages “and the languages we speak are: 1. Standard English, 2. Working class and slang English, 3. Standard Mexican Spanish, 5. North Mexican Spanish dialect, 6. Chicano Spanish…, 7. Tex-Mex, 8. Pachuco(called calo)” (105).this really attracted me the first time I read it, although I did not clearly understood what was really saying or all those tipes of languages Anzaldua was talking about but in some way I knew it was true and therefore important. As I was reading through it the second time, it made think that all those languages as she calls it are true. This reading made me realize many things that I as a Mexican American are part of my identity and who I am. And me, like many others, I think we can relate somewhat to Anzaldua story.
Great work on your difficulty paper! You have applied some sound reading strategies here: 1) recognizing when your comprehension is low 2) re-reading the section 3) moving past the difficulty and reading the surrounding paragraphs 4) making personal connections with what you do understand 5)re-reading and 'digging' deeper in an effort to make-meaning. Bravo! This persistence will serve you well as a college student! I also found your analyze of this important passage very compelling. You helped me to gain a deeper understanding of the Spanish in this text. Thank you!
ReplyDeleteI like how you can approach this as a Spanish speaker and not quite understand everything, then to understand it later by noticing context clues and what is said in the other paragraphs.
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