My Own Wild Tongue

"How do you tame a wild tongue, train it to be quiet, how do you bridle and saddle it? How do you make it lie down?" - Gloria Anzaldua, How to Tame a Wild Tongue
 
I'm taking a class called Writing as Activism and I think this just might be the best class I'll take at PSU. I get to sit among people who are intent on writing and changing the world for two hours, twice a week. These individuals have each come from very different backgrounds, have very different writing voices and are so willing to be vulnerable and share with strangers. It's been two weeks, four class meetings and I already feel like I'm part of something important. I'm ecstatic, determined and terrified. I did a big thing in class on Tuesday and read some of my writing. It's one thing to write behind a computer screen, far away from the reaction of your audience. It's another to read your words, out loud, and watch the faces of those around you as they take some of your truth for themselves.

In class we were discussing writing in all of the ways we know how. Not necessarily whether we prefer to write poems, short stories or opinion pieces--but what words do we use to convey what we mean? For some in the class, those words are in other languages or very specific to the place where they grew up.

I realized that my wild tongue has been the voice of my beast. And now, in this class, I may find a way to take back what is mine.

From my notebook:
I had learned to speak a language other than English and had not known it. I had studied the words while I lay in bed unable to sleep, my mind moving faster than the cars on the street outside my window. The words came to me through tears and the buzzing itch of blood through my veins. I had never been asked to speak it louder than a whisper until I met her, the guide to my wise mind. There are fewer words in this language I have taught myself. Fewer words but more emotion, than often times, I can face. Even without the words, my body responds and loses itself. Hours, days and sometimes weeks pass before I wake up and see the words scribbled on the walls and ceiling in cracks and crevices that swallow me whole.