The Struggle for Language Rights: Naming and Interrogating the Colonial Legacy of "English Only"

Deslenguadas. (We are de-tongued.) Somos los del espanol deficiente. [We are those with deficient Spanish.] We are your linguistic nightmare, your linguistic aberration, your linguistic mestizaje, the subject of your burla [The subject of your joke]. Because we speak with tongues of fire we are culturally crucified. Racially, culturally and linguistically somos huerfanos [We are orphans]--we speak an orphan tongue. (Anzaldua, 1987, p. 58) I am one of those Chicanas who early in life was locked into a barrio existence where I was made to feel ashamed of speaking Spanish--shame that painfully reproduced itself as I was devalued yet again for being a non-Standard English speaker. I am one of those "culturally crucified" Chicanas who struggled to understand what it means to be a cultural orphan. This process not only denied me the signposts needed to form a psychologically healthy identity, but also contributed to a form of cultural schizophrenia that Homi Bhabha (1994) appropriately defines as a permanent state of cultural homelessness. I struggled in this state of cultural homelessness, attempting to reconcile the requirement to exterminate my cultural and linguistic selves with the promise that I would at best be a hyphenated American, and at worst be relegated to subhumanity, as Jean Paul Sartre (1967) so accurately described the colonial condition. It was this state of cultural homelessness that led me to Gloria Anzaldua. Gloria Anzaldua has had a tremendous influence on both my professional and my personal life. At a personal level, Anzaldua helped me understand much of what had troubled me growing up as a Chicana and a member of a historically subordinated cultural group in the United States: She helped me understand why I felt a sense of inferiority and self-hate, why I resented whites, and why I felt shame and rejection whenever I spoke Spanish in places where it was frowned upon and among people who held the expectation that I (and my family members) should assimilate--that is, lose our language and culture in order to become imperfect facsimiles and, ultimately, unacceptable copies of white Americans. I felt this powerful yet unspoken and unnamed shame, and although I wanted to "squeeze the shame out"--as Malcolm X encouraged colonized people to do--I didn't know how. Instead, I often assumed a false bravado and an in-your-face attitude, because anger would overcome me and I did not have the language to express my recognition of efforts to reject me, to subordinate me, and to oppress me. As a young woman, I had particular difficulty communicating with white peers, whom I perceived as condescending in their treatment of me and other people of color. When I read Anzaldua and others, I learned to "lovingly" yet vigorously challenge white colleagues who too often took (and still take) it upon themselves to speak for me and other people of color--a skill that comes in handy in the academy, I can assure you. Through Anzaldua's writing, I learned the importance of developing a political language with which to name my colonization, and so to find a voice--my voice. In Anzaldua's essay "La Prieta" (the darkskinned one), she powerfully captured the indignation people of color feel but often are unable to articulate when whites arrogantly speak for them. As bell hooks (1990) points out, many white women believe that there is no need to hear the voices of women of color when white women can "talk about you better than you can speak about yourself." Anzaldua (1983) accurately described this phenomenon of white women attempting to "de-voice" women of color: White women flock to our parties ... come to our readings, take up our cause. I have no objections to this. What I mind is the pseudo-liberal ones who suffer from the white women's burden. She takes a missionary role. She attempts to talk for us--what a presumption! This act is a rape of our tongue and our acquiescence is complicity to that rape. …