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Jessica Virgin

Prof. Stacey VanDahm

ENGL 2830

03/19/2023

The Literary Analysis and Comparison of Julie Atsuka’s Buddha in the Attic and Gloria

Anzaldúa’s How to Tame a Wild Tongue

These authors come from very different backgrounds and cultures, and each is telling a

very different story with different endings. However, they are linked by one thing, the

intercultural experience and melding between their heritage and “white America." The biggest

common denominator being the feeling of shame. Shame of bringing outside traditions into an

unwelcome world, shame of betraying their first language/culture, and shame of being a new

kind of people - misunderstood by those on the outside. These women have captured the stories

and essence of so many different people trying to grow up in these conditions beautifully. Their

impact is powerful and their experience is a distinctive story that teaches us all what it’s like

trying to find a place in this world for people who cannot be labeled or grouped into one idea.

Julie Atsuka’s The Buddha in the Attic is so unique in the way that it is written, the form

is a continuous web of stories and run-on sentences. It never really seems to stop, but instead

each blip of world you see folds right on into the next, slowly coating us with the wave of human

experience. Some are amazing and hold tender sweetness, while others are some of the most

frightening and appalling things you can think of, but always, she just keeps moving on. The key

part about her writing though, is the narrative. Atsuka uses a “we” and “they” point of view. In

doing so, she groups these Japanese women into one great story, the only time you see her use

“they” is when she shares their children’s point of view. Mainly though, she tells the plethora of
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mini-sentence stories of the Japanese-American woman who came to the U.S. to meet their

husbands, expecting love, wealth, and a life of comfort. Instead, they find themselves in (for the

majority) loveless marriages filled with endless hard labor, excruciating child births, extremely

poor living conditions, and of course, they are met with racism at every corner. “If our husbands

had told us the truth in their letters—they were not silk traders, they were fruit pickers, they did

not live in large, many-roomed houses, they lived in tents and in barns and out of doors, in the

fields, beneath the sun and the stars—we never would have come to America to do the work no

self-respecting American would do” (Atsuka, 10).

Many wanted to go home, but they knew it wasn’t an option. “If you come home, our

fathers had written to us, you will disgrace the entire family. If you come home your younger

sisters will never marry. If you come home no man will ever have you again” (Atsuka, 13). So

they stayed, even though they lived in a hell far from home; working all day in fields and white

peoples homes, attending to their family and household all night. Getting sexually assaulted and

exploited by their husbands and employers alike, and trying with all their might to fit into this

new world.

When these women have children, however, we see a new kind of generation that has

grown up in this new world. They assimilated easily into their schools and learned to navigate

the English language and customs. From their perspective, their parents were the “they.” The

kids knew where their parents stood in the social and economic chain, “mostly, they were

ashamed of us…they longed for real fathers with briefcases who went to work in a suit and tie

and only mowed the grass on Sundays. They wanted different and better mothers who did not

look so worn out” (Atsuka, 24). These children could never understand their mother’s situations,

they could never begin to fathom all they had to go through or why they even came to America
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in the first place where they were an embarrassment. But what these women and their children

were really experiencing was not because it was something they did, it is because of the racism

that forced them into such awful working and living conditions. They felt ashamed of the lives

they lived, but oppression survives in a climate where the majority can bully those who are

different under them, and that is never something minorities should ever feel penance for. To be

forced into an unwelcoming world does not mean you are subject to the judgment of the

oppressor.

Gloria Anzaldúa’s short essay, How to Tame a Wild Tongue is her personal story of

growing up trying to hold two different worlds in each hand, and the shame she too felt from

being different. She was born an American and a Mexican, speaking both Spanish and English.

Together she, and those like her, became their own people: the Chicanos. They came to speak

their own blended version of English and Spanish, it was their unique way of communicating

that represented the way that they lived. Anzaldúa’s point to this essay is to show how language

is a big part of how we identify ourselves, and how hard it is to try to find a home in just one

place when really you belong to all kinds of worlds and groups. Just like the Japanese, they were

met with a world that did not try to accept or understand them when they couldn’t identify with

one or the other. “Chicanas who grew up Chicano Spanish have internalized the belief that we

speak poor Spanish. It is illegitimate, a bastard language” (Anzaldúa, 5). That belief came from

the way they were treated wherever they went, like at school, their teachers denied them their

first language, “I remember being caught speaking Spanish at recess–that was good for three

licks with a sharp ruler” (Anzaldúa, 2). They were silenced time and time again, stripping them

of their identity and making them feel ashamed of being different.

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The saddest part of the Chicano people being shamed for creating a new world is the fact

that they were not a traitorous or stupid people. They were very skilled and had an astounding

understanding of language, speaking many variations of it such as, “standard English, working

class and slang English, standard Spanish, standard Mexican Spanish, North Mexican Spanish

dialect, Chicano Spanish (Texas, New Mexico, Arizona and California have regional variations),

Tex-Mex, [and] Pachuco (called cal`o)” (Anzaldúa, 3 & 4). She goes into detail about how all

these variations happened over 250 years and the languages they’ve mastered as well as their

own Chicano tongue. It is indeed an amazing, living thing; developing with each new generation.

However, because they were taught this was a disgusting, mutt form of communication they

grew to even be skirtish of each other. They would try to “out-Chicano,” “oppress,” (Anzaldúa,

6) and use their “language differences against each other” (Anzaldúa, 5) when they were

together, then stick to just one language out of fear while they were in public. “To be close to

another Chicana is like looking into the mirror. We are afraid of what we’ll see there. Pena.

Shame…Repeated attacks on our native tongue diminish our sense of self” (Anzaldúa, 6). The

biggest takeaway from Anzaldúa’s piece is that without the freedom to be one’s self and

experience a total immersion of one’s culture (Anzaldúa, 6) totally free of fear, we should not

call this the land of the free and fight to broadcast stories like hers.

Both books are very unique, to be sure, in both form, voice, and narrative. However,

through the story(‘s) these women tell is where we find the common denominator of shame to be

who they are. A kind of feeling that’s caused by living in a place where who you are is not

welcome, where you are something that has to be dealt with. The Japanese people (especially the

women) have to make themselves smaller to fit in. “Whenever we left J-town and wandered

through the broad, clean streets of their cities we tried not to draw attention to ourselves. We
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dressed like they did. We walked like they did. We made sure not to travel in large groups. We

made ourselves small for them—If you stay in your place they’ll leave you alone” (Atsuka, 14).

They stayed out of sight because of the ridicule they would face if they did not in the same way

the Chicanos code switched languages to avoid judgment. For the Japanese, they were not

welcome home because they would bring their shame with them and they would be just as

unwelcome there as they would be in America. With the Chicanos, their language was just as

uninvited with “true” Spanish speakers, “Chicano Spanish is considered by the purest and by

most Latinos deficient, a mutilation of Spanish” (Anzaldúa, 3). This forces both of these

minorities to completely abandon who they are and put the Buddha in the attic so to speak, throw

away their language and their culture and assimilate into the corners of society.

However, while both try to blend in, it doesn’t stop the physical persecution they

experience from American society (aka white people). The Chicana’s parents worry for their

children’s future. They fear that if they grow up in the shadows like they did then their kids won't

be able to be successful in this world, telling them (in English translation), “To find a good job

you have to know how to speak English well. What is all your education worth if you still speak

English with an ‘accent’”(Anzaldúa, 2). Their language was a hindrance, a red flag on a resume

to a racist employer, a roadblock that they had to adjust to. The Japanese people were always

quiet, polite, and hardworking for their neighbors and employers who deserved much less,

“..still, they gave us a hard time. Their men slapped our husbands on the back and shouted out

“So solly!” as they knocked off our husbands’ hats. Their children threw stones at us. Their

waiters always served us last. Their ushers led us upstairs, to the second balconies of their

theaters, and seated us in the worst seats in the house” (Atsuka,13 & 14). This is why the

problem is not with the people who are different, but with the people who “culturally crucify”
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them “racially, culturally, and linguistically (Anzaldúa, 5). We should be really ashamed of those

who do not accept, do not love, and do not value those who bring newness into this world.

When faced with this kind of reality, where racism and discrimination reign free

everywhere; from business, to home, to the supermarket, to the government, it is truly an

amazing kind of people to not only bear through it all, but embrace what makes them different

and use it to make change for the better. However, there are still stories like this today and people

deny it. They push aside the truth which just lets this same kind of oppression, fear, and shame to

spread. These two pieces of history are witnesses to the truth, they are proof that they are here

and deserve just as much space, representation and respect as anyone else. “I will no longer be

made to feel ashamed of existing. I will have my voice..I will overcome the tradition of silence”

(Anzaldúa, 6). We should all learn from these authors and others who have been generationally

silenced but found a way to speak their mind anyways, for hopes of a better world.
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Works Cited

Otsuka, Julie. “Buddha in the Attic .” Buddha in the Attic by Julie Otsuka Come,

Japanese! - Slps.org, Aug. 2011,

https://www.slps.org/site/handlers/filedownload.ashx?moduleinstanceid=145591&dataid

=114188&FileName=Buddha%20in%20the%20Attic%20by%20Julie%20Otsuka.pdf.

Anzaldúa, Gloria, “How to Tame a Wild Tongue.” 1987.