Aria Malovany Week 3 Reading Response 3

1. 1. 1. For Anzaldua, not being able to mix her speaking of different languages is absurd. “Until I am free to write bilingually and to switch codes without having always to translate, while I still have to speak English or Spanish when I would rather speak Spanglish, and as long as I have to accommodate the English speakers rather than having them accommodate me, my tongue will be illegitimate,” (Anzaldua, 74). She is saying here that if she can accommodate English speakers without a returned accommodation, she should also be able to write bilingually without translation or criticism. If she has to switch languages while speaking to people, why can’t she do it in her own world and work as well?  Anzaldua doesn’t want her speaking of different languages to represent “different universes,” she wants to be able to speak freely. She believes that your culture is in your true self and soul, not your location, which causes speakers of different languages to share a common reality. “Deep in our hearts we believe that being Mexican has nothing to do with which country one lives in. Being Mexican is a state of soul—not one of mind, not one of citizenship. Neither eagle nor serpent, but both. And like the ocean, neither animal respects borders,” (Anzaldua, 76)
      2. I think Anzaldua is a very persuasive writer since she really stands up for what she truly believes in. She chose to write her literary narrative based on the hardships she went through her whole life about speaking her own language. Her writing is almost contradictory, rebellious if you would. Her entire piece is about how she wasn’t able to express herself in the way she wanted to, yet her narrative is written bilingually. As the reader reads about how she couldn’t switch between languages, Anzaldua did exactly that in her piece and proved that she was able to emerge from all the criticism and drift into success, which persuades inspiration.
      3. (a)“Successful literacy narratives use specific examples to illustrate ideas about literacy that we’ve acquired as a result of our own experiences, and explain explicitly why these ideas are important,” (Liao, 59). Sedaris definitely illustrated his narrative. He clearly described his classroom experience and the beginning of his learning French. I was able to picture his teacher and her voice. He nicely explained what it’s like to live in a foreign country and not fluently speak the native language. I experienced this when I went to Israel for my gap year. Although I’ve been learning Hebrew my whole life, I never really fully caught on and am far from fluent. I very much related to Sedaris’s illustration about that. (b)“Literacy narratives are stories in which something changes. If nothing changes, then it’s not a narrative. How did a particular moment change or help you achieve some greater awareness about culture, identity, or the world as you know it?” (Liao, 59). Liao’s convention about change doesn’t seem to be so present in Sedaris’s essay. Although at the end he is able to understand what his teacher is saying, he said himself, “Understanding doesn’t mean that you can suddenly speak the language. Far from it. It’s a small step, nothing more,” (Sedaris, 5). There is small change in that he sees himself starting to improve and some improvement for the future, but there were not such drastic changes in his progress of learning French and the process of his literacy as a whole.
      4. I don’t think Manson feels the same way as she did in the beginning by the end of her essay. Although she couldn’t completely fix the problem she was facing, she tried and was comfortable with the outcome. “I said my thoughts, even though they were incomplete. I felt more than that. I always will. But I said what I could, and that was enough,” (Manson, 88). Instead of her feeling self conscious about her vocabulary and ability to say what she’s thinking, she acknowledges her problem and settles nicely with her progress.

Vocabulary:

1. Recourse- (n) a source of help in a difficult situation
2. hailed – (v) call out to (someone) to attract attention
3. Detest- (v) dislike intensely.
4. Forged- (v) move forward gradually or steadily.
5. leafing – (v) turn over (the pages of a book or the papers in a pile), reading them quickly or casually.