The Chicana author Gloria Anzaldúa wonders how to tame a wild tongue, referring to her Mexican heritage and the many variants of English and Spanish she speaks. In the comments, we explore how Spanish and foreign accents have been stigmatized and used to discriminate in the United States.
The Chicana author Gloria Anzaldúa wonders how to tame a wild tongue, referring to her Mexican heritage and the many variants of English and Spanish she speaks. In the comments, we explore how Spanish and foreign accents have been stigmatized and used to discriminate in the United States.
First Poem
You Cannot Leave
By Alma Villanueva
(Fragment)
you cannot leave
my aunt's house
without a
full stomach
she would be
offended;
she's small
and earth color, her
face records
her mother's people
the hills and desert of Sonora.
her eyes hold
an eclipse
of clarity/pain:
once,
when I was small
I remember
her and I eating
a cluster of grapes
in a matter of minutes
each one so delicious
we couldn't wait
for the next, and
when the last
grape was gone
we laughed because
the grape's skeleton
looked so funny—
before she was born
her father recognized
her mother and converted (he was a minister)
and married her; his indian
blood mixed with that
of the spanish
conqueror. I saw a
picture of his congregation
in Mexico, his wife's brother
holding their first born
who died before five,
and the majority of his
followers indian/eyes stared
out at me and I
recognized them,
my aunt, not yet born
among them.
I grew up hearing
my aunt's visions and dreams,
she had no one but
a child to tell them to—
she saw the bombing
of Japan and the
back of God
and a neighbor's son opened
the front door and called her
the day he was reported missing
in action, and she
dreamt my house and knew
where the trees stood before
she ever came—and she's
always apologetic for staying
"too long" and she's always
sorry you're leaving "too soon"—
talking and telling in spanish
to english
in english for the skeleton
in spanish for the flesh,
we sit for hours
she being older for awhile
I being oldest in my turn
taking turns as we've
always done—
and she tells me
she tried going to
an anglo church, but their
faces were blank
and their
eyes
mute; they did not
recognize her—
and with the spontaneity of
a laugh held long
within her
she smiles
as she tells me:
—Mi gente son el color de la
tierra.—
and the clarity overshadows
the pain.
and she lapses and offers
me a cup of coffee and I
drink it or she
will be offended.
A poem by Alma Luz Villanueva
Welcome
Greetings! dear listeners of Tres Cuentos, the bilingual podcast dedicated to the literary, historical, and traditional narratives of Latin America. I am Carolina Quiroga-Stultz, and today we continue exploring the courageous and, at times, painful journey of Latinxs in the United States!
About eight years ago, when I arrived in Johnson City, Tennessee, to study a Masters in Storytelling at East Tennessee State University, I was lucky to find a campus job at the LCRC, The Language and Culture Resource Center. At the time, the director of the center was Dr. Ardis Nelson. We called her La Jefa! She became a great friend and mentor.
Most of the students working at the LCRC came from different backgrounds, most had some Latino connection, but others were learning to speak Spanish. I thought it was fantastic to hear the facility with which much younger students would switch from English to Spanish and vice versa in one sentence. I wished I could do it, but my poor brain was working 24/7 just to keep me sane. Never in my life had I had to talk and think and write in English all the time.
One day, while conversing with an older friend that also worked there. Like me, she was from South America. I said that it would be amazing to always speak Spanglish. Her eyes almost popped out of her face. She, like many other Latinos of older generations, did not find that very amusing. But I thought, what is the deal with the purity of the language? In the end, all languages not only have evolved and continue to change, but in the very beginning, they were invented by someone.
Languages did not sprout thanks to some sort of divine inspiration. They were the product of the human need to communicate. But today, in many places around the world, people use language to categorize and segregate the other, the newcomer, the stranger.
*
In this episode, I want to thank the Chicana Author and Poet Alma Luz Villanueva for granting permission to read the poem we started the program. I will tell you more about her later.
Also, if you follow Tres Cuentos on Facebook or Instagram, you probably saw the first interview I conducted with Dr. Nicolás Kanellos. Who graciously agreed to share more about the history of Latinx Literatures in the US. You can find the videos on our website. www.trescuentos.com Feel free to share them. The interview is in both languages!
The Chicana Author Gloria Anzaldúa wrote today’s narrative, and you can find the text in her book Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza. Published by Aunt Lute Books. You can find more at www.auntlute.com
The narration that follows comes in the voice of Adriana Flores-Ragade from the program Latinx America’s Podcast, but I will tell more about her and her program when we get to the comments.
Today’s story explores the struggles with language in a world that uses the excuse of purity of language to classify, discriminate, and turn people against each other.
How to tame a wild tongue
Gloria Anzaldúa
THIS TEXT IS NOT AVAILABLE
Find the book at www.auntlute.com
Acknowledgments
Dear listeners, which of you are willing to give a try to speak Spanglish? Well, before we dive into the issues with speaking Spanish in this country or speaking with an accent let me introduce today’s new voices.
I want to thank the Chicana author and poet Alma Luz Villanueva for permitting us to read the poem I read at the beginning. She has published eight books of Poesia (poetry) the most recent of which is called 'GRACIAS.' She has also written four novels, most recently, Song Of The Golden Scorpion, a collection of short stories, and The Weeping Woman, La Llorona and Other Stories.’ She has contributed to textbooks used in the US and abroad. You can find more about her at http://www.almaluzvillanueva.com/
Reading the first and third excerpts on Anzaldua’s text, Adriana Flores-Ragade is the founder of LatinxAmerica Media and the host of the LatinxAmerica podcast which highlights Latinx leaders and champions in tech, innovation and investment. She also hosts special series on LatinxAmerica Education and recently co-founded We Are Diverse Creators, a platform to build community amongst Latinx podcasters to elevate diverse voices. She has held leadership positions in the broadcast media industry and education non-profit sectors where she focused on building equity and access programs and partnerships. https://www.latinxamerica.com/
Reading the last narrative, we have Dr. Lorena Gauthereau, who is the Digital Programs Manager for the US Latino Digital Humanities program at the University of Houston's Recovering the US Hispanic Literary Heritage. She teaches interdisciplinary courses through UH's Center for Mexican American Studies. Dr. Gauthereau received her PhD in English literature and her MA in Hispanic Studies, both from Rice University. She is the daughter of Mexican immigrants and grew up on the US-Mexico border.
How about we listen more about Adriana’s podcast.
Commentary
Very well, I am ready to dive into the turbulent waters of the purity of languages. For me, this is a tricky subject because I have experienced, first-hand, a sort of discrimination for having “English in progress,” or, as the famous Cuban singer Celia Cruz once said, “My English is not very good-looking!”
I remember countless times when people told me, “I like your accent!” I never really knew if they meant it in a nice way, and I should take it as a compliment, or if it came from a place of sarcasm. The truth is that we all have accents.
A while back, when I was applying for a grant to better my storytelling skills, I asked some friends to write me letters of recommendation. I was a bit surprised when I read in one of the letters that I should try to get rid of, or soften, my accent. I know the suggestion came from a good place, but my self-esteem landed on the pavement. I kept wondering how people managed to understand me with my thick accent.
For about five years, I avoided phone conversations. I was afraid I would not understand the other person, and worried that asking them to repeat would make them angry. I was also terrified that my accent and only having a “so-so” English would get in the way. So, what got me over that? It was realizing that I am not alone!
A very dear friend from Spain once complained, “these people do not have imagination!” Meaning that people in the US do not try hard enough to understand other accents; they get angry and give up easily.
Now, after reading for the first time Gloria Anzaldúa’s text “How to Tame a Wild Tongue,” –which made me cry and laugh at the same time – I came to see another cruel reality, that even Spanish speakers discriminate against those who are working on their Spanish.
A side note, I think if people in the US start watching more foreign TV shows with subtitles, they would become more patient and get more use to the idea that the world is a vast and diverse place! That is what we do at home, and we love it! I am learning Japanese and German too!
Anzaldúa’s comments took me back in time, to memories that I had archived in the basement of my unconscious. Even though I am technically a native Spanish speaker, and some may claim that Colombian Spanish is one of the best, learning Spanish was a headache. I failed orthography in school and again in college. I think I probably inherited that from my dear father. Although he is now a very respected professor in Latin America, he employs editors because his orthography is still a work-in-progress.
What always amazes me is how some of those with good grammar and orthography tend to see themselves as if they were on a European Middle Age Crusade, as if they need to convert a bunch of infidels by prayer or by sword! Believe I met many that were quite self-righteous about speaking and writing proper Spanish!
Here I recall, that last year, when I was promoting on Facebook a Spanish episode, a lady wrote that she would not continue listening to the podcast because I had started the program by welcoming the audience in the following way “Bienvenidas y Bienvenidos.”
What is wrong with that? Allow me to explain. Spanish nouns have gender, and most formulas, such as a welcoming, tend to use the male word unless, in your audience, you only have females. So, technically, I should have said “Bienvenidos” and not include the female noun of the word.
In Spanish, there are not many gender-inclusive words, which I think we should try to use both noun gender even if the sentence takes longer to deliver. But to that lady, it was like a sacrilege. I wonder how she will react when she hears the term Latinx, which today is still under hot debate. But let us not go down that route.
I tried to explain to the lady that I was inclusive, but it fell on deaf ears. These language puritans do not seem to understand that languages evolve over time due to social changes. I dare anyone to open a book from 100 years ago, and another from 300 years ago, and not notice how their language has changed, including grammar and orthography!
*
On the fascinating subject of Spanglish, from the book Raciolinguistics: How Language Shapes Our Ideas About Race, edited by H. Samy Alim, John R. Rickford, and Arnetha F. Ball, we find the article “From Mock Spanish to Inverted Spanglish. Language Ideologies and the Racialization of Mexican and Puerto Rican Youth in the United States.”
The author of the article, Jonathan Rosa, quotes Ed Morales’s Living in Spanglish, saying, “Why Spanglish? There is no better metaphor for what a mixed-race culture means than a hybrid language, an informal code . . . . Spanglish is what we speak, but it is also who we Latinos are, and how we act, and how we perceive the world. It’s also a way to avoid the sectarian nature of other labels that define our condition, terms, like Nuyorican, Chicano, Cuban American, Dominicanyork.”
Whether or not people use the term Spanglish as a unifier of all those other groups, it is something that I think many are unaware that it is a “label-in-progress,” and it will require more debate.
What surprises me is that even though a group of people may have in common the Spanish language, some of them will still find a reason, a motif, or an excuse to create subgroups within the bigger group. Jonathan Rosa states, “Stigmatization occurs through the policing of English-language use by US Latinas/os. Signs of accents and Spanish-language use are regarded as reflections of abject foreignness, regardless of the long history of Spanish-language use across the Americas.”
Oh boy! The language police people are everywhere!
Side note: I am a firm believer in the “Theory of Multiple Intelligences” by Edward Gardner. In 1983, he published Frames of Mind: The Theory of Multiple Intelligences. a unique and enlightening book that I highly recommend. In the book, he suggested that all people have different kinds of "intelligences."
In other words, we all perceive and relate to the world differently, depending on the type of intelligences that we have most developed. Because of course we can have more than one.
I have been applying Gardner’s theory in my work with children. And believe it or not it is real! From my own experience, I know that the spoken language is one type of intelligence. It is in the parent's and teachers’ best interest to develop strategies to address all other kinds of intelligences. Because, until recently, we have been using only one way to communicate: words. But there is a vast universe of ways to reach the mind and hearts of others.
Do you have children that no matter how many times you “talk” to them, explain with words a concept, they do not get it? And then someone else comes with an entirely different approach, more kinesthetic, musical, visual, etc., and the kid shines like a star! Well, there you go! All those other types of intelligences are languages, too, vehicles of communications.
But enough about that. Today I want to talk about history!
*
Did you know that for a long time there has been an “English only language movement” and that last year it was re-introduced in the US Congress under the H.R.997-English Language Unity Act of 2019? The purpose of this law is “to declare English as the official language of the United States, to establish a uniform English language requirement for naturalization, and to avoid misconstructions of the English language texts of the laws of the United States, pursuant to Congress’ powers to provide for the general welfare of the United States and to establish a uniform rule of naturalization under article I, section 8, of the Constitution.”
Why is this even being considered? Although the US does not have an official language, many individual states have declared English as their official language. The English Language Unity Act was introduced in the House of Representatives on February 6th, 2019, and from there, it was referred to the Committee on Education and Labor, and the Judiciary Committee. Later it was referred to the Subcommittee on Immigration and Citizenship, and we have not heard from them yet. They are probably waiting for the election results.
Nonetheless, what is interesting is that this is a recurrent concern that the country has not yet solved, so let’s go back in time.
In Chapter 91 of The Latino Condition, edited by Richard Delgado and Jean Stefanic, we find more about the linguistic racism toward Spanish in the article “The Law of the Noose: A History of Latino Lynching and Its Relation to Official English.”
Richard Delgado, tells us that, “Recent research by reputable historians shows that Latinos, particularly Mexican Americans in the Southwest, were lynched in large numbers, during roughly the same period [that is between 1882 and 1968] when lynching of blacks ran rampant. Few people know this. Every schoolchild knows that blacks suffered that fate. Why do so few know about the lynching of Latinos?... Moreover, the reasons that motivated the lynching were similar for the two groups—acting ‘uppity,’ taking away jobs, making advances toward a white woman, cheating at cards, practicing ‘witchcraft,’ and refusing to leave the land that Anglos coveted—with one exception. Mexicans were lynched for acting ‘too Mexican’—speaking Spanish too loudly or reminding Anglos too defiantly of their Mexicanness.”
Continuing with the subject, Delgado says, “the lynching of Mexicans, like that of blacks, was often marked by hilarity and an atmosphere of righteous celebration or ‘public spectacle.’ Those conducting the events believed they were acting in full accord with community wishes and meting a type of informal justice. One historian even describes Anglo vigilantism toward Mexicans as a means of solidifying society and reinforcing civic virtue.”
The account continues, but I will spare you the gruesome lynching details. Again, I ask myself, where are the movies about this? There has to be records of such awful practices that took place in the Southwest, especially in the states of Texas, California, Arizona, and New Mexico. All these states had a large concentration of Mexican American population.
Delgado says that “Many lynching’s took place near jails and courtrooms when vigilante mobs could not wait for formal justice to proceed. Others occurred in isolated mining camps or sparsely settled ranch areas, often with the assistance (formal or informal) of the authorities. William Carrigan estimates that the number of Mexicans murdered run into the thousands.”
*
Of course, do not think that Mexicans just retreated to their homes in fear. They fought back, forming Latino civil rights organizations, leading protests, and exercising their rights. Delgado tells, “Some, such as mythic outlaw Joaquin Murieta, took matters into their own hands, avenging the lynching of compatriots. Juan Cortina and Gregorio Cortes, the heroes of several corridos, did the same.”
At this point, I would like you to have a taste of one of those corridos. Now, corridos or ballads evolved from the romance corrido, a narrative song that the Spanish brought to the Americas in the XVI century.
From the book Herencia: Anthology of Hispanic Literature of the United States, published by Arte Público Press, we learn that “The corrido along the Texas-Mexico border often reflects the heightened tension associated with intercultural conflict between Anglos and Texans of Mexican descent from about 1848 through the II World War.”
So, from the same book, I will share the corrido wrote in Spanish called “Joaquin Murieta” translated by Manuel A. Tellechea and Margarite Fernández Olmos. I will read only an excerpt.
I am not an American
But I understand English.
I learned it with my brother
Forwards and backwards
And any American
I make tremble at my feet.
When I was barely a child
I was left an orphan.
No one gave me any love,
They killed my brother,
And my wife Carmelita,
The cowards murdered her.
I came from Hermosillo
In search of gold and riches.
The Indian poor and simple
I defended with fierceness,
And a good price the sheriffs
Would pay for my head.
From the greedy rich,
I took away their money.
With the humble and poor,
I took off my hat.
Oh, what laws so unjust
To call me a highwayman.
And the corrido continues.
To my constant question about where the movies are about these painful episodes in the US history, Delgado explains, “One key reason is that the primary accounts of the linchamientos [lynching] appeared in community newspapers, which were printed in Spanish. Since relatively few mainstream historians read Spanish or consulted these sources, Latino lynching remained beyond the ken of most mainstream readers. Oral culture, including corridos, actos, and cantares, told of the deaths of brave Mexicans who defied Anglo authority and paid the price.”
Granted, scholars such as Carey McWilliams and Arnoldo De León mentioned lynching, but still, in contrast with black lynching, the Mexican suffering remained unanswered and forgotten.
Why? You may ask. There are several theories. One Spanish is not widely spoken and accepted, so the access to that history is limited. Two, the horrifying violence against Mexican has been swept under the carpet. Both Anglo Americans and Mexican Americans prefer to forget about it and move on.
Delgado even assures that “Since Latino lynching falls outside the dominant paradigm of American history, the few historians and writers who came across a reference to it may have afforded it scant treatment.” So, hush my friends, this is still a taboo subject.
Now, why am I putting you through all this? So, you start connecting the dots. Because all that racial violence led to a racist movement called “The English-Only Movement.”
*
As of today, about half of the states in the country have declared English their official language, although, as we indicated before, not even the country has an official language. However, the current government is working on it.
For a while, several workplaces have demanded their employees to speak only English, even when interacting with the public and with each other. The constant argument is that requiring English as the exclusive language will encourage immigrants to assimilate and acquire proficiency in English, as Delgado explains, “thereby avoiding the formation of permanent ghettos and a balkanized national culture.” That is, to avoid diving the country even more.
On the topic of immigrants assimilating to the new culture, I recall how shocked a dear friend was when she came to the US to visit. She stayed at another friend’s house, where she witnessed that the mother of her friend who had been living here for at least a decade had not yet learned English. The lady in question would always ask her daughter to translate for her when needed.
I was not impressed. First, several immigrant communities are well established and continue speaking their native language, because that is all they need. Second, the older you get, the harder it is to learn a second language. Tell me about it! Third, English is such a difficult language, so many rules, and at the same time, it contradicts itself a lot.
In my case, my dear friend and partner in this project, Don Hymel, (whom we suspect is the first proof-listener in the country, helps me untangle this confusion and contradiction. Indeed, if my English sounds decent to your ears, it is because he helps me with that!
*
The “English-Only Movement,” is not satisfied with making English the official language, its participants are also determined to ban bilingual education in public schools. That applies to Spanish, Mandarin, and any other language that is currently part of many school curricula. Thus, to the followers of such movement, the United States is an inherently English-speaking country when we all know that denies the real history of the people that built this nation.
Just in case you are not yet convinced that English is used as means for discrimination and instill fear, allow me to quote several examples from the article “The English Language Movement” by Steven W. Bender. You can read the text in the book The Latino Condition.
Bender comments that in the 1990s, a Latino Spanish speaking customer was kicked out of a tavern for refusing to converse in English. The argument of the Anglo side was “they start speaking their language, and we don’t know what they’re saying. They could be insulting us, making fun of our wives, or figuring out a way to rob the place.”
To that, I simply say, why on earth are your ears dropping? Of course, it all goes down to racism. In this case, linguistic vigilantes, who likely do not even speak proper English.
In another example from the same article, Bender quotes an incident that occurred in 2005 at a Massachusetts baseball field “when the league baseball officials prohibited coaches from instructing players in Spanish, prompting a national little league spokesperson to confirm no rule prohibited players from speaking Spanish on the baseball field.”
And there are plenty more examples; each one gets more infuriating and painful to read. Primarily because at times when I go buy groceries, my mom calls me, and we speak in Spanish, and I am always on my toes, looking over my shoulder to see who is giving me the evil eye.
*
But let us move on. The lack of accurate facts in the US history taught in schools, the lack of bilingual or even trilingual education, and the continuation of a postcolonial mentality has led many second generations of immigrants to experience a disconnection with the struggles and reality of their parents and grandparents.
I recall a dear friend that until recently, used an Anglo last name, but after a year of soul searching, my friend finally re-invited her Hispanic last name to join her again.
Richard Delgado points out that studies that came out around 2009 “of second generation of Latino immigrants in the United States show that their children who are born here exhibit much higher rates of depression, drug-taking, and crime than their parents, who immigrated to the US as adults. [Delgado asks] Might the severed connection with their culture and history, accelerated by failure to learn Spanish, be contributing to this increase in pathology and social distress? [Delgado answers himself] My suspicion is that it is, and that this constitutes an implicit form of lynching.”
Whether you agree with this or not, it is something to ponder for a moment. In truth, we all go through a crisis of identity at some point in our lives, and I cannot imagine how complex it is to navigate a world that demands you to speak English in order to succeed. But at the same time, you know that what you love and hold dear are the people that are not fluent in that language, or even speak it at all.
As an interpreter for Hispanic communities in the past, I met many parents who were embarrassed by their language limitations. Thus, they struggled to raise kids that had assimilated into the US culture.
It would be incorrect to assume that the English-Only Movement has exclusively targeted Spanish speakers, James Crawford reminds us of other targets.
In the article, “Hold your tongue,” from The Latino Condition, Crawford explains, “At various points in our history, linguistic minorities have faced policies of exclusion or coercive assimilation or both. Yet, unlike today’s campaigns, these were normally aimed at particular groups for particular purposes—for example, in the 1880s, when federal authorities decided that ‘the first step…toward teaching the Indians the mischief and folly of continuing in their barbarous practices’ was to force their children to attend English-only boarding schools; or in 1897, when Pennsylvania enacted an English-proficiency requirement for miners, seeking to bar Italians and Slavs from the coal fields; or in 1921, when Republicans in New York pushed through an English literacy test for voting, hoping to disenfranchise one million Yiddish speakers who had an annoying habit of electing Democrats.”
What is the difference between the actions of the English-Only movement a hundred years ago and today? The argument is that the “American Language” is threatened, therefore the American way of life, and their precious nationhood is also threatened.
There is so much more I could share with you at least two more books, but I rather close the program with another narrative. The following excerpt was written about forty years ago by the Chicana singer Joan Baéz, who graciously granted permission to share it with you.
Dr. Lorena Gauthereau reads the segment. You can find the full text in the book The Chicanos: Mexican American Voices, edited by Ed Ludwig and James Santibañez, Baltimore, Penguin Books, Inc., 1971.
Excerpt from “Thoughts on a Sunday Afternoon”
By Joan Báez
I have been asked if I think of myself as a Mexican or a Chicano or as being dark-skinned.
This is a difficult question for me to answer, since for the past ten years of my life I have made a point of not categorizing myself. I have refused to accept the title of singer, for instance. I have not particularly identified myself with any special group, but more with humanity as a whole.
I’ve always thought brown is beautiful, and every chance I’ve had to get into the sun I’ve done so, because I like being brown.
When I entered junior high school there was prejudice against brown people. It took me a couple of years to realize that my being brown was why I did not make friends easily.
I have never really regarded myself as Mexican or English. My father was Mexican and was born in Puebla, Mexico. On my mother’s side there was English and a dash or Irish. I never thought of myself as an English girl, and not too much as a Mexican. I feel distant from the cause of any particular minority group in the sense that when I throw myself into “the cause,” it is that of mankind. I have never felt I should work just with browns or just with blacks or just with whites.
In the same way, my husband David, (in prison for draft evasion), has not wanted to involve himself only with political prisoners. When he was in Safford, a federal prison, about half of the prisoners were Mexicans. After he had finally got them involved in “the cause,” they reached a point where they too felt that they were participating in the struggle of all persecuted people.
I know that color made a difference in junior high school. I think I find difficulty talking about this because I never felt I personally badly discriminated against.
When I was in junior high my father was a professor at a university, and although I looked very Mexican, I did not speak Spanish. I felt that Mexican kids were getting a dirty deal, but I did not feel that I was. When my father first came to Stanford University, one of the top professors there would hardly speak to him. My father really had to struggle to break through that barrier.
I remember a story my parents told me. In a little town in New York state somebody called me the N-word because they had never seen anyone as dark as I was. I said, “You ought to see me in the summertime.” I loved dark-colored skin.
Once somebody called me a dirty Mexican, and a student asked my teacher, “Is she a Mexican?”
My teacher, attempting to defend me, said, “Joan is the very highest breed of Spanish.”
I said, “What do you mean, the very highest breed of Spanish? I am a Mexican.” I made a big point of saying I was a Mexican.
Farewell
And that is all for today. We will be back in two weeks with our last episode on Latinx Literatures in the US, and this time the spotlight will shine the narratives of Latino immigrants in the US. Until the next cuentos, adios, adios!
Music
Regrets - Causmic
Trouble - Topher Mohr and Alex Elena
Aviated - Nana Kwabena
Halo - Yung Logos
Two Face - Causmic
Lost and Found - Jeremy Blake
Joker - Causmic
Bird Food - DJ Freedem
Soul Searching - Causmic
Trekking - Density & Time
Bibliography
Raciolinguistics: How language shapes our ideas about race. edited by H. Samy Alim, John R. Rickford and Arnetha F. Ball. Published by Oxford University Press. 2016
Boderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza by Gloria Anzaldúa. Published by Aunt Lute Books. 1987.
Contemporary Chicana Poetry. A Critical Approach to an Emerging Literature. Marta Ester Sánchez. UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS. Berkeley · Los Angeles · Oxford
© 1986 The Regents of the University of California. URL: https://publishing.cdlib.org/ucpressebooks/view?docId=ft5w1007fd&chunk.id=d0e10112&toc.depth=1&toc.id=&brand=ucpress
H.R.997 - English Language Unity Act of 2019. URL: https://www.congress.gov/bill/116th-congress/house-bill/997/all-info?r=9&s=1
Herencia: the anthology of Hispanic literature of the United States. Editor Nicólas Kanellos. Co-editors Kenya Dworkin y Méndez, José B. Fernández, Erlinda Gonzales-Berry, Agnes Lugo-Ortiz and Charles Tatum. Published by Oxford University Press, New York, 2002.
The Latino/a Condition: critical reader. Edited by Richard Delgado and Jean Stefanic. Published New York University Press, 2011.