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Gerardo Zaragoza
Professor Srmabekian
English 114A
26 September, 2014
Literacy Narrative
Most of my life my mother and I always had an odd form of communicating with each
other, just thinking about it makes me wonder how on earth we are able to understand each other.
Ever since I started talking I always was better at writing and speaking English. My mother on
the other hand was always better at speaking Spanish, and growing up I never was able to grasp
the language fully. Sadly I was never able to fluently communicate with another person who
primarily spoke Spanish. I can read and understand Spanish when others are speaking it to me,
but simply trying to come up with a sentence or a word to reply to someone who is talking to me
always proves to be hard. Despite this I the experiences I had because of this inspired me to be a
better writer. Being able to properly communicate with other individuals is so important in
todays society. I feel as though it is a concept that could easily be taken advantage of.
Thinking back to when I was a young individual I remember how much of a struggle it
was for me to tell my mom about a day at my school. This was a reoccurring problem because
she wasnt the best at speaking English. She faced the problem of speaking English and I faced
the problem of speaking Spanish. This sort of thing became a real problem when I started going
to middle school. During this time in my life my mother was sort of expecting me to tell her
everything that was going on at school because she wanted to make sure I was getting all of my
work finished. Whenever we tried to have a basic conversation about all of these things the
conversation would sound like a mixture of Spanglish and some kind of broken English. To put
into perspective the kind of communication that was going on between us, a person can use the

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text the Arts of the Contact Zone as an example. Within the article Mary Louise Pratt mentions
a letter that was written by Guaman Poma, an Inca who spoke Quenchua. The letter was written
in two languages Spanish and Quechua. The purpose of this was to allow the Spaniards to sort of
connect with the Inca people who at the time were being slaughtered by all of the Spaniards for
no good reason. Pratt explains how Poma does this, by appropriating and adapting pieces of the
representation repertoire of the invaders. He does not simply imitate or reproduce it; he selects
and adapts it along Andean lines to express (bilingually, mind you) Andean interests and
aspirations (Pratt 36). My mother and I do the same thing that was done in the letter. Poma in
his writing attempts to adapt two very different languages in order to have the invaders
(Spaniards) come to an understanding of the culture and life of the Incas. When my mother and
I talk to one another we both make an attempt to mix and mash all of our knowledge of one
anothers dominant language in order to come to an understanding of what is happening within
each others lives. The letter that the Incas wrote to the Spaniards was never brought to their
attention because of the way it was written. It was foreign to the Spaniards therefore it was never
taken seriously. Luckily, my mother and I have the ability to connect thus, it allows us to bring
both of our cultures (referring to language) together to come to an understanding.
I cannot remember a single moment in my life where we had a conversation that didnt
include some kind of mixture of Spanish and English or have some kind of phrase or word made
up to reference some other particular thing. For instance if my mother would ask por favor me
puedes pasar la cebolla, I would ask what does cebolla mean. She would then reply and say
please pass the unyum. After this instance I would be confused and look through the fridge
then finally realize that she was referring to the onions. Everyday up until about four weeks ago I
felt that it was a terrible thing that neither I, nor my mother had the ability to speak a single

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language to the point where we could properly communicate with each other.
I started feeling this way around the time I began getting tested at school to see how well
I could read and write in English. I started getting tested around the third grade and it continued
from time to time during middle school. Every single time I got tested I felt as though I
shouldve been getting better at understanding the English language. In a way as time progressed
I felt as though in order to succeed in school I had to distance myself from the way I was
speaking at home and it sort of lead to me not understanding Spanish as well as I could have. In
my mind I felt that English had to be the dominant language in my life. In school and in so many
public areas I spoke English so much that it simply became the natural language that I would end
up speaking for the rest of my discourse.
When I was a kid I had the mentality that my mother should be able to speak English
because she was here in a country where everyone had the ability to do so. Since she didnt, I
had to be able to speak Spanish to a certain degree to at least be able to talk to her. Thinking back
to this point in my life, I feel as though I can relate to Gloria Anzaldua. In the beginning of the
article How to Tame a Wild Tongue Anzaldua mentions, I am a border womenI grew up
between two cultures, the Mexican and the Anglo (Anzaldua 62). In this quote she goes on to
say that she has always felt that she was stuck between two different life styles and cultures. In a
way I was going through the same thing when I was younger. I had sort of a life with the people I
spoke to English day in and day out and I had some kind of different and odd relationship with
my mother that involves speaking Spanish. The daily situations that I would go through with
both parties would be so different that I wouldnt be sure what was the right or wrong way to act
and communicate with other people. I have basically been straddling for a large portion of my
life.

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When I first read through How to Tame a Wild Tongue it lead me to a position of self
realization. As time went on I sort of just accepted the fact that my mother and I are always
going to be speaking in an odd manner, that is until I finished reading an article written by Gloria
Anzaldua. When I read the article I realized that it really doesnt matter how a person speaks or
communicates with other individuals. Anzaldua says that Even among Chicanas we tend to
speak English at parties or conferences. Yet, at the same time, were afraid the other will think
were agringadas, because we dont speak Chicano Spanish. We oppress each other trying to outChicano each other, vying to be the real Chicanas, to speak like Chicanos. There is no one
Chicano language just as there is no one Chicano experience. (Anzaldua 81). Basically she is
saying it doesnt matter how you are speaking. You can speak in any way you want to. You
shouldnt have to change the way you communicate for anyone or anything. Anzaldua mentions
that some Chicanas tend to oppress one another to try to show how a real Chicano is supposed
to speak. The problem with that is whatever a person may call the right or wrong to speak
shouldnt be held true to everybody.
Every single individual grew up in their own environment, with their own experiences
which defines who they are and how they speak. I didnt grow up knowing about the right way to
speak I just grew up knowing how to speak period. Basically just by reading that quote I found
out that the way me and my mom communicate is fine. The way we speak to each other is fine
its our language its the way we are. When my mother and I speak we both tend to focus our
speech with our own dominant language. This means that when my mom speaks, she talks in
Spanish and tries to talk a bit of English so her message is clear to me. I do the opposite, I speak
mostly in English, but I add a few words in Spanish so she knows what Im talking about.
Although if may have not been easy at first trying to communicate with my mother in my

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earlier years the experiences that I gained from all of it allowed me to be a better writer.
Although my writing may not be the best having to deal with the challenge of communicating
with my mother gave me better insight of how to tell a better story. All the years of telling how
my day went basically gave me practice of how I should go about telling a story. I couldnt just
simply tell my mother in her native language what exactly was going on I had to get creative
with my own and her own language to come up with answers day in and day out so we can come
to an understanding with each other. The experiences that a writer goes through could largely
affect what exactly they are going to write about. For example Anzaldua talk a lot about her
culture, her family, and school life; therefore it is safe to say that she must have been influenced
by the events that were going on her life to be able to talk about her language and the situation
shes found herself trapped in with that subject. Another writer that I can say was influenced by
her past experiences is an author that goes by name of Audre Lorde. What Lorde does in a poetic
fashion is express the idea that women are being oppressed and we live in a male dominated
society. In her text she uses phrases like this For within living structures defined by profit, by
linear power, by institutional dehumanization, our feelings were not meant to survive. Kept
around as unavoidable adjuncts or pleasant pastimes, feelings were expected to kneel to the
thought as women were expected to kneel to men (Lorde 39). Basically this quote is saying that
women werent meant to survive in the world we created and women in the world we created
have made them the inferior sex and have to kneel to men. Throughout the rest of the text Lorde
makes and attempt to convince other women that their ideas and feelings shouldnt be oppressed
no longer and should be expressed. Through the power of poetry women must express
themselves and fight against the idea of how women are perceived at the moment. I bring this up
because it is the experiences that Lorde has gone through that have shaped her world view. I

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cant personally relate to how she feels and the obstacles that she had to go through since she is a
women living in a male dominated society. However, I can liken this position to the
circumstance that my mother and I share. My mother speaks a language that is placed in the
minority. I speak a language that is placed in the majority. My mother has developed a discourse
that is focused on Spanish which is in the minority. For a long time she has been surrounded in
an environment that has a different dominant discourse than the one she grew up knowing. Like
the idea of women being oppressed in a male dominated society my mothers language is
oppressed as well in an environment that is dominated by the English language.
Communication is an important concept that shouldnt be taken for granted. There are
many ways to communicate with other individuals and it is a great thing that people can come
together and simply talk. I havent always had the ability to talk to my mother in a normal way
and it always made communication a hassle. Despite this the experiences that I have gone
through have shaped my ideals and how I can communicate with others.

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Work Cited
Anzaldua, Gloria. How to Tame a Wild Tongue. Eighth ed. St. Martins: Emily Berleth, 2008. Print.
Lorde, Audre. Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches. Trumansburg, NY: Crossing, 1984. Print.
Pratt, Mary Louise. "Arts of the Contact Zone." Ways of Reading 5th Edition (1999): n. pag. Print.