Tanya’s parents did this because they wanted her to fit into this, “red, white and blue world.”(pg 8) They wanted her to be able to speak the English language without a hint of the Spanish accent. Her parents said that by doing so people would look past the ethnicity and only see an American girl. Tanya tries to relate with her audience by speaking a bit of Spanish in her essay. Some of the words she uses are Latinos, ingles, and gringa. By using these words she can relate to both the American and Latino audiences, while also showing her knowledge of the Spanish language.
The essay “Se Habla Espanol” by writer Tanya Barrientos is a first person narrative describing her life experiences starting from her childhood up through her adult years. Tanya Barrientos is a first generation immigrant, coming from Guatemala at the age of three. In her memoir, Barrientos explains how Americans at that time were not culturally tolerant, and foreigners were expected to “leave their cultural baggage at the border.” As a result, her parents immerse her into the American culture by speaking only English, to ensure her success. However, in doing so she became ashamed of her ethnicity, and failed to identify with her native culture (Roen, Glau, & Maid 2011). .
Barrientos depicts the hardships and discriminations of the growth of a child coming to America from another country and being forced to speak English and not her native tongue. She knew she was not white like the other children and although she was living the American dream with her family, her parents put her into a position to be English speaking where as they spoke in Spanish to one another but English to the children. As she got older she realized she wanted to be a proud Latina and felt like an outcast from her people because she didn’t speak the language. As her efforts continued she felt discriminated upon by the very people she sought out to teach her. Page 58 she says the registrar called her and her brother, “you people”.
While she is there, people are very surprised that she can speak English. She learns that she isn’t accepted in many things in school and after school, but she happily makes a new friend named Radine. However, everything seems to change between them when they reach high school. Jeanne see’s that Radine can do so many more things than her and Jeanne wishes to be accepted as not only a foreigner, but also a normal person like everyone else. Later papa decides to move to a new place and a new school.
She does this by using Spanish words that people may not understand and by using an unorganized, random structure to confuse the reader. It is clear that Anzaldua was strongly against assimilating into American culture and becoming Americanized; she wants to keep the Chicano culture alive. Her parents, however, wanted her to do things the American way so that she could pursue the American Dream and make something of herself; therefore her parents often scolded her for speaking Spanish in school. Anzaldua’s ideal reader needs to be able to sympathize with her and to have an open mind. In order to make the reader meet these qualifications, Anzaldua tries to confuse and frustrate the reader by using language that is difficult to understand in the form of excerpts from poems, a muddled structure, and confusing
Early on, Barrientos recognized the intolerance for differences in her new land. With a regretful tone, she explained how she, too, rejected her cultural diversity out of respect for her parents’ wishes and in an attempt to fit in. When she was seven years old, she heard the Registrar at her elementary school enrollment say, “You people. Your children are always behind, and you have the nerve to bring them in late?” (p. 58). I believe her parents understood that there would be many barriers on the path to success and went about removing as many of
She also did not give up even though she faced many difficulties in the journey of how she made the world recognized Chicano Spanish . Marjane in “The Veil “ also shows us her strong belief in God ,and that she did not give up her dream to be a prophet , which she believed in, was a decision from God. The second similarity from both essays is about their hopes for freedom. In “How To Tame A Wild Tongue “,Anzaldua asked for freedom and to allow her to learn new things in her own way. Being punished during recess, requiring to take 2 speech classes to get rid of the accent ,and “ Who to say that robbing people of its language is less violent than war “ is the quote that she put at the end of the first paragraph , are examples that clearly show how she felt back then.
Analysis of Se Habla Espanol David S English 115 In her essay Se Habla Espanol, Tanya Barrientos talks about her struggle with growing up in America speaking only English. She discusses how she has struggled with both fitting into the American culture, and how also how she doesn’t fit into the Latin-American culture either. Tayna has two main audiences intended for this essay. Her primary audience is any people who find themselves in a similar situation. She seems to want to help them feel its okay to not fit in either group perfectly.
Society has also played an important influence on both these Authors as Tanya Barrientos explains in Se Habla Espanol. Because of her families desire to have English to be the only spoken words in the home, she tells of how she grew up around few Latino’s. And that speaking Spanish reflected your social status of being poor, and that you where limited to a meager life of housekeeping and waiting tables. That even ambitions for ones future was frowned upon because of the language that her family denied to speak. This very thought by society is reflected in (3rd paragraph 489). “Your children are always behind, and you have the nerve to bring them
When she was asked that that question it caught her off guard. The woman corrected her and said, “Oh Fxuang,” with a little bit of laughter the lady told her, “You don’t know how to speak your name.” (13). Later on that day when Hwang arrived at home she asked her parents why they never bothered to correct her. Her mother said, “Big deal, you are American.” (13). She felt that her sense of identity was already collapsing and it left her unhappy knowing her cultural character is barely precise.