Writing beyond the call: One woman’s response to Gloria Anzaldúa’s “Speaking in Tongues”

Abstract

In her manuscript, “Speaking in Tongues: A Letter to Third World Women Writers,” author Gloria Evangelina Anzaldúa composes several open and honest letters to women of color, challenging them to actively incorporate the process of writing into their everyday lives. She encourages her readers to engage in organic writing by recapturing their own silenced narratives. In response, the following letters reflect on the lasting impact of Anzaldúa’s words and how we might incorporate her ideals of literary activism into our own writing practices. Particularly, the following text will consider how those drawn to epistemologies of the Global South might resist mechanisms of sameness and in doing so begin to rethink how we situate our own stories within the realm of early childhood.

Introduction

When Gloria Evangelina Anzaldúa (1983b: 26) drafted “Speaking in Tongues: A Letter to Third World Women Writers” in the year 1979, she wrote, “Dear mujeres de color, companions in writing—I sit here naked in the sun, typewriter against my knee, trying to visualize you”. She imagined women of color, Black, Chicana, and Indigenous, embodying the complexities of her everyday life, and she envisioned women making spaces for themselves at the literary roundtable. Her imaginings challenged the patriarchal subjugation of language as dominate male discourse (Anzaldúa, 2007) and appealed to the often unheard voices of marginalized women to speak up and speak out. Anzaldúa dared women of color to reawaken their unruly tongues through speeches, protests, writings, poems, drawings, songs, and any other forms of dissent (Cutter, 1999; Espinosa-Aguilar, 2005). She pleaded that their voices no longer remain hidden or silent in regard to their own realities. This is of particular importance in the field of childhood studies.

Coincidently, I was born the same year Anzaldúa authored her letters to her “hermanas.” Just as she was giving birth to her vision of women writers, my mother was giving birth to me. Although this association may be a bit romanticized, I cannot deny that I am drawn to the energy of this text, for its gravitational pull extends beyond the bounds of time. Her words move me like the rhythm of my favorite love song, pleading with me to engage in their transformative intentions. Like Anzaldúa (2007: 81) and her quest to revive her “serpent’s tongue … woman’s voice … sexual voice”, many women of color writers still labor to overcome a tradition of silence within early childhood studies which privileges the voices of the many over the few. Therefore, what does this metaphor of reviving the “serpent’s tongue” mean for women of color committed to writing within contemporary times? Moreover, what does this metaphor mean for those of us working within the field of early childhood?

In an attempt to address these pressing questions, two letters have been composed in the spirit of “Speaking in Tongues”: the first being a direct response to Gloria Anzaldúa and the second serving as an appeal to women of color in early childhood. It is my hope that each letter serves as a credible archetype of what it means to embody the spirit of “truthsayer with quill and torch” (Anzaldúa, 1983b: 173), offering us all a second to reflect on the significance of Anzaldúa’s petition and an opportunity to examine how her words might impact our subsequent work. With this quest in mind, I humbly offer one woman’s personal journey and commitment to live up to this proposed expectation of writing. Willing to “risk the personal” (Keating, 2000), the letters shared will reveal my own fears of writing as a Black woman living and working within a predominately White terrain of early childhood education—as well, the hesitancies and reservations one might encounter when writing about race, class, gender, and sexuality within White patriarchal spaces of early childhood. As a Black female doctoral candidate, these letters are an attempt to begin to speak to Anzaldúa, self-identified as a “Chicana tejana feminist-dyke-patlache poet, fiction writer, and cultural theorist” (Keating, 2005: 2). My letters also serve as an occasion to dialog with other women of color in the field of early childhood, allowing a moment of transparency within the empirical arena as we venture to dismantle onto-epistemologies of the Global North, which for too long have structured and disciplined us all.

A response to Anzaldúa’s “Speaking in Tongues”

But it’s taken over thirty years to unlearn the belief instilled in me that white is better than brown—something that some people of color never will unlearn … And it is only now that the hatred of myself … is turning into love. (Anzaldúa, 2009a: 43)

August 2016

Dear Gloria Evangelina Anzaldúa,

I am writing this letter in response to your impassioned plea for women of color to pick up the pen and spill our truths. I wanted you to know that I have received the message of your appeal, and as a woman of color I am prepared to take up this charge. Although first I must confess, I am astounded at the amount of time it has taken for me to encounter your letters. I question why they were not introduced to me at any point in teacher preparation, being that I studied in the border state you write about, Tejas? It is a curious situation that you and I have not previously met before this correspondence. Having grown up in the same country, the same region, attending the same university as undergraduate students, how unfortunate is it that our acquaintance was met after such an extended amount of time. Nonetheless, here we have arrived at this moment in my doctoral studies—you imagining me, me acknowledging you, and both recognizing the possibility of ourselves in one another.

My dearest Anzaldúa, I want to assure you that we have heard your pleas; yet I am sure you know that your sisters of color have always been writing. Enter Anna Julia Cooper, Zora Neal Hurston, and Maya Angelou, just to name a few. Each of these women in her own right played a significant role in building the foundations of bridges we would later cross (Keating and González-López, 2011). Surely you thought of them as you wrote your letters and would not erase them with implications that women of color have not been writing? Instead, was your petition to women of color an unnerving premonition, foreboding how the evil pull of privilege might silence another generation of women? Was it your intent to warn us that our social gains might deceive us, leaving us to believe that whatever public scorn or disdain we once encountered in our personal and professional lives might acquiesce into fragmented pieces of our collective distant memory, or moreover, become a fallible myth.

Anzaldúa, where you once cried out “we never had any privileges” (Anzaldúa, 1983b: 26), I ask how today’s women of color should reconcile the few privileges obtained? As a first-generation college student, graduate student, and now early childhood doctoral candidate, I interrogate each empirical decision and juncture I have made when exploring and collaborating with children, communities of color, and other “vulnerable” peoples. Constantly, I monitor the best course of action, mindful, and cognizant of the enactment of any privileges I have obtained. Going forward, how might I remain true to myself and thrive within early childhood spaces in a manner that runs counter to the perpetuated universal norms favoring the White Euro-American, middle-class, heterosexual child, teacher, and parent (Saavedra, 2011). The marginalized can only hope that the spoils of global capitalism and neoliberal policies will not shroud our commitment to social justice, nor stifle our efforts to shout back. Let us weep for those who have now begun to do the dirty work of their oppressors in pursuit of prestige and authority among their peers. For Audre Lorde (2007) warned us “the master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house” (p. 112). As women of color contribute our knowledge to spaces of early childhood, we cry for those still stuck in a system of binaries, hierarchies, and false categorizations, unable to see alternative paths to their theorizing. We, the new generation of nepantleras, born into a space much different than our parents and birthing a generation much different than our own, recognize that “negotiating cuesto trabajo” (Anzaldúa, 2002: 567), but we are willing to do this work.

So Anzaldúa as I shift through, between, and among the stages of nepantla, your “zone of possibility” (Anzaldúa, 2002: 544), I enter a space testing for the first time my words, letting go, giving birth to page. I will utilize the power of marginalized epistemologies to unveil and offer insight into inequitable practices that might otherwise go unnoticed in early childhood by the majority, willing to accept the consequences of my actions and sacrificing any privileges I might otherwise obtain.

When colleagues married to the practice of objectively viewing children as research subjects challenge any intent to center the lived experiences, relationships, and humanity of children of color within research, I will respond and shout out that such silencing tactics will no longer stand. Anzaldúa, I will undertake the task of growing into my neplantlera body, unwilling to “assimilate, separate, or isolate” myself in exchange for titles, comfort, or power (Anzaldúa, 2002: 548)—realizing that if I do not tell the stories of young children that look like me, then who will? With your guidance, as we traverse the patriarchal and oftentimes contentious terrain of early childhood, may we continue to grow into our better selves and be willing to do the necessary work to remain within our mediator bodies. Anzaldúa, rest knowing that we have followed your lead and offer our whole selves to our writing, for we know that it will take all of our selves to engage in the transformative work that must be done.

With appreciation,

KSR

A petition to the woman of color in early childhood

No one’s going to storm the castle walls nor kiss awake your birth, climb down your hair, nor mount you onto the white steed. There is no one who will feed the yearning. Face it. You will have to do, do it yourself. (Anzaldúa, 2009a: 41)

August 2016

Dear Women of Color,

Sister writers in childhood studies, did you hear Gloria Evangelina Anzaldúa’s call for our voices to be heard? Have you experienced the impassioned letters she titled “Speaking in Tongues: A Letter to Third World Women Writers”? Honestly, she wrote them more than three decades ago; so are you writing yet? If not, what has been your hesitation? Perhaps, you have never known that you were once charged to write or never envisioned the possibility that there was an audience awaiting you. Maybe you are unaware that you have descended from generations of great women writers, and your hands have always held the pen—visions of Anna Julia Cooper and Zora Neal Hurston come to mind. Have time or low societal expectations been placed on you? Or have the normalizing discourses of early childhood stifled your instincts to problematize framings and practices that you may have once yourself been engaged in? If so, who will give us back our literary voices? What responsibilities do we, as women of color writers in early childhood, hold today? How does the marginalized woman regain her voice after life has stripped it from her?

To begin to answer these questions, I offer my own personal testimonio (Saavedra and Pérez, 2012) a moment from my childhood, a time when I felt most confident and self-assured in order to understand the complexities of self-imposed silence. As a little girl, I was unafraid to correct anyone who mispronounced my name, a name gifted to me by a great aunt who declared that if she would have been blessed with a daughter, she would have named her Kia. Unfortunately, a seventh grade White, male teacher stripped me of that pride when he decided to educate me on how my name should be pronounced. As he proceeded with white chalk in hand to the board, each stroke and “correct pronunciation” confirmed a young girl’s greatest fear that my name had revealed some intimate inferiority. In that instance, my name became a weapon used against me, and it was then that I decided that it was not always necessary to correct everyone who mispronounced my name.

How often could the same scenario or a similar version be recounted by others? As early childhood educators, how concerned are we that we make a conscious effort to pronounce a young child’s name in a manner that validates and affirms who they know themselves to be (Nieto, 2012; Souto-Manning, 2011)? How frequently do we give the pronunciation of a name thought? In these moments, early educators are offered an opportunity to dismantle the stinging disciplinary and regulatory consequences of postcolonial thought (Soto et al., 2010).

Why must we write? In an interview Anzaldúa replies, “Writing saved my life. It saved my sanity” (Smuckler, 2009: 89). Sisters in early childhood, we too must write for our sanity and to heal old wounds. We have a responsibility to unmask stories of daily terrorism, so they offer a sense of validation to others. For whom should I write? Our words can offer support to young children of color currently being silenced by their caregivers. We can write to reveal the injustices perpetuated by others who have sought to shame us. For whatever reason you choose, write without fear.

Our stories are the narratives that still need to be told in early childhood, stories that still remain unheard. Like Anzaldúa, I implore you to use your own experiences as inspiration when dismantling injustices; recapture those moments of your past and put them to paper. No longer can we consume the words of our foremothers for our betterment alone and for our own self-healing without repaying the debt. Our intentions must be nobler and we must write to preserve our visibility, lest we be cast back to the shadows. We must write so that women of color have a chance to see themselves in text. We must expose our vulnerabilities, so that others may be healed, colleagues and children alike.

As I finally sit down to write, awaking my quelled anxieties, I must do so with a confidence that I do not currently fully possess. I struggle to write against distractions and self-imposed defense mechanisms. As Anzaldúa warns, “All of your worst fears—you confront them when you’re alone because there’s no energy going out to anybody else” (Smuckler, 2009: 83). However, I must not be afraid to cry, cry the words onto the page. Wholeheartedly, I confront my fears that my words might betray me; they will not, nor will yours.

As Anzaldúa (1983a) writes in This Bridge Called My Back:

We have come to realize that we are not alone in our struggles nor separate nor autonomous but that we—white black straight queer female male—are connected and interdependent. We are accountable for what is happening down the street, south of the border or across the sea. And those of us who have more of anything: brains, physical strength, political power, spiritual energies, are learning to share them with those that don’t have. (p. iv)

Sisters in early childhood, we must write; we must remember it all! Dig deep to conjure up those stories we have tried to keep hidden within ourselves. Be brave enough to traverse the dangerous terrain of remembering who you truly are, and then be willing to sacrifice yourself to heal us all. As Keating and González-López (2011) explain, “By redeeming your most painful experiences, you transform them into something valuable, algo para compartir or share with others so they too may be empowered” (p. 1). Women of color, we must let it be known to any oppressor that we are far more afraid of our own voices than we could ever be afraid of theirs. Our mouths are quick, sharp, and combative, yet loving and determined to speak. Now that we have heard Anzaldúa’s call, we must continue to answer.

With love,

KSR

Concluding thoughts

In dismantling the process of writing, Anzaldúa urged that when one engages with text, one must consider her position, “For whom are you speaking? To whom are you speaking … what are the stakes, what’s at stake … In other words, what’s in it for you?” (Anzaldúa, 2009b: 193). I confess, this text has stirred a range of emotions in me, a bit unexpectedly. Initially, I was drawn to “Speaking in Tongues” (Anzaldúa, 1983b) for superficial reasons; I am a Black woman, so when she speaks to the mujeres de color, she is speaking to me right? However, this letter has come to mean so much more. Instead, it is a roadmap, a comfort, refuge, mirror, and thorn challenging me to look beyond the conforming and constricting configuration of childhood studies by first looking inward (Saavedra and Pérez, in press). I have experienced emotions of challenge, defiance, and anger, as I have struggled to relinquish the hold of white patriarchal knowledge which I know have tamed my tongue. As Anzaldúa (2002) purports, the task of throwing away abstraction and academic learning for the unchartered “… next phase, next place, next culture, next reality” (p. 574) is soul tapping work.

I write this letter as a Black woman, early childhood scholar, teacher, partner, mother, daughter, sister, friend, future academic, and in addition to all of me that I have yet to name. As I have become acquainted with Anzaldúa, I have admired her transformative spirit, welcoming presence, and her ability to forgive herself even when she did not have all of the answers to her questions. May we all know ourselves intimately enough that we are no longer burdened by the energy it takes to hide ourselves and from ourselves, and may we all extend our sincerest gratitude to Anzaldúa for this life lesson. We can only hope that it will not take our daughters, sisters, friends, and lovers another 30 years to learn the same. With this in mind, let the reemergence of self be foundational as we rethink the onto-epistemologies of the Global North. May our collective narratives from the margins indeed empower and proffer a course of action within childhood studies harmonious with the lives of the children we once were.