Home Read & Respond Category: Counterstories

Gloria Anzaluda. How to Tame a Wild Tongue. Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza 4th edition Aunt Lute Books, 1987 (pp. 75-86). www.everettsd.org/cms/lib07/WA01920133/Centricity/Domain/965/Anzaldua Wild-Tongue.pdf.

Annotation: Anzald·a, Gloria. ôHow to Tame a Wild Tongue.ö Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza, 4th ed., Aunt Lute Books, 2012, pp. 75û86. This lyric essay is by Gloria Anzaldua, a scholar,writer, and activist of Chicana Feminism. This essay was published in 1987 and serves as a counter-narrative for Mexican Americans. This essay explores the relationship between identity and how language can help ease that feeling of disconnection within oneÆs culture. The narrator is a Mexican American and is living between these two cultures so she explains the way in which Mexican Americans are judged for speaking their language or for speaking ôSpanglishö. She is judged for not speaking ôproper Englishö and goes on to explain how language is a part of oneself, and how it is tied to oneÆs culture, pride, and self expression. She explains the way that she overcame this, empowering other Mexican Americans to do the same.

Positionality Statement: As a Mexican American who has lived in the United States for over 10 years, I too have experienced similar feelings of disconnection within my identity while being so far from my home and culture. This essay illustrates these experiences of cultural disconnection and the strategies Mexican Americans use to resist such pressures. I felt very compelled to the format that the writer decided to write this essay, through the mix between english and Spanish she used which helped me feel more connected to her story since I speak "Spanglish" almost every day and as I have merged my two languages into a part of who I am.

Contributor: Maria Jurado (mjurad@umich.edu) contributed this source citation on October 23, 2025.

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Martinez, Aja. On Cucuys in Bird Feathers: A Counterstory as Parable. Writers: Craft & Context, vol. 1, no. 1, 2020, 44-46. https://journals.shareok.org/writersccjournal/article/view/8/7

Annotation: Martinez

Positionality Statement: As a tenured professor who mentors emerging scholars, Martinez

Contributor: Nancy Small (nancy.small@uwyo.edu) contributed this source citation on October 5, 2025.

Most Recent Comment: Martinez's does convey the idea of protecting students from mentors that may take advantage of them, but it is also relevant to discuss the way in which to emphasizes this idea. In her parable, which I agree with the fact that she does not extensively explain it, the reader is either left utterly confused or actively engaged with trying to come up with an interpretation for what the author is saying. I think Martinez's choice in this was to reflect the complexity of counterstories on the reader, some will understand the counterstory and others will not as they have not been faced with a situation where the counterstory could come to fruition. (Addison Bellanca, bellanca@umich.edu, October 23, 2025)Martinez's does convey the idea of protecting students from mentors that may take advantage of them, but it is also relevant to discuss the way in which to emphasizes this idea. In her parable, which I agree with the fact that she does not extensively explain it, the reader is either left utterly confused or actively engaged with trying to come up with an interpretation for what the author is saying. I think Martinez's choice in this was to reflect the complexity of counterstories on the reader, some will understand the counterstory and others will not as they have not been faced with a situation where the counterstory could come to fruition. (Addison Bellanca, bellanca@umich.edu, October 23, 2025)
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Positionality Statement: As a first-generation graduate student, I am appreciative of and empowered by Martinez

Contributor: Emily Pifer (piferemily@gmail.com) contributed this source citation on October 8, 2025.

Most Recent Comment: Something that struck me on Martinez's use of parable for her counterstory was the salience of irony and defiance throughout multiple aspects of the narrative, effectively defying expectations of what the narrative surrounding CRT should be. At their basis, parables frame ideas as easy to understand stories for a general audience to gather a lesson. Complicated situations with many moving parts are difficult to condense into a fairytale-like context, yet Martinez achieves this in ôOn Cucuys in BirdÆs Feathers: A Counterstory as Parableö. Furthermore, parables are widely applicable and universally relatable, something mentorship in upper academic spaces is not. Martinez navigates this by referencing her culture and widely recognizable animals as characters in her narrative, not only providing the audience with a concept with which to grasp the situation, but also defying the way which issues pertaining to the themes covered are told. Higher academia holds a certain standard of seriousness that participants are expected to meet. Martinez disregards this expectation, explaining a serious topic within a serious space with a childhood boogy-man figure. (Ana Cano, anavcano6@gmail.com, October 23, 2025)
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