Identity Essay

Adrianna Colish

ENG1100

13 September 2016

Professor Young

Identity

            Identity describes who you are as a person.  Identity varies from person to person, which makes us all unique.  In Gloria Anzaldúa’s essay “How to Tame a Wild Tongue” she talks about how her identity reflects on her language.  On the other hand, my identity reflects on my religion.  There are so many different factors that play into someone’s identity but in the end identity is who you are.

            One aspect of identity is language.  Gloria Anzaldúa speaks Chicano, which is part of the Spanish language.  Everyone around her speaks English and tries to convince to her to stop speaking her native language.  Even her mother wants her to stop, “’I want you to speak English’… my mother would say, mortified that I spoke English like a Mexican.  Their purpose: to get rid of our accents.  Wild Tongues can’t be tamed, they can only be cut out”(Anzaldúa 246).  Anzaldúa doesn’t want to give up her language, even when everyone else around her is telling her to she stands strong because, her language describes who she is.  Throughout her whole essay she talks about how she will never stop fighting for her language, because her language is her identity, “So, if you want to really hurt me, talk badly about my language.  Ethic identity is twin skin to linguistic identity- I am my language”(Anzaldúa 250).  Being Chicano is what makes Gloria Anzaldúa who she is, and she refuses to change because she doesn’t want to change her identity.

My parents have always played a huge part of my identity.  I look like my dad and I act like my mom.  They influenced most of my identity and that’s why identity is so important to me.  Although, there is one thing they’ve tried to push onto me my whole life, which is the catholic religion.  Ever since I was little my parents forced my sister and me to go to church every Sunday.  They nurtured us to believe in God by telling us that God was great and we should always go to church to pray for the next week.  When my sister finally got her license, my parents said we could go to church Saturday night or Sunday afternoon by ourselves.  Instead of actually going to church, we would go and sit at dunkin instead.  They tried to force this belief on me my whole life.

It has been in my nature to not believe in God.  There is something about him and the religion that makes me not believe.  In my opinion, if God were real bad things wouldn’t happen or happen as much.  Life is so complicated sometimes when it really shouldn’t be and if God were real I believe life would be easier.  I used to pray all the time and my prayers never got answered so I didn’t understand the point of God and religion.  I respect other people’s beliefs but God and religion isn’t in my nature.

When my sister turned 18 and my parents said she didn’t need to go to church anymore.  Since, I’m only a year younger than my sister they didn’t force me to go anymore.  I haven’t been to church in 2 years and even though my parent’s don’t like it, they aren’t trying to force religion onto me anymore.  It’s not apart of my own identity.

In conclusion, there are so many different aspects of identity.  For example, language is Gloria Anzaldúa’s identity where she is from and the language she speaks is what makes Anzaldúa herself. My identity is based off of my beliefs.  I was nurtured to be catholic and believe in God, but it was in my nature to go against my parent’s beliefs and focus on myself.  Anzaldúa and I both went against our parents, her mom wanted her to speak English and my parents wanted me to believe in God.  We didn’t listen to them and that is what makes us unique and individual.  We decided our own identity.

  Works Cited

Anzaldúa, Gloria. “How to Tame a Wild Tongue.” Teaching Developmental Writing.  Ed.  Susan Naomi Bernstein New York: Bedford/St. Martin’s 2013. 245-255. Print.