Allen 1

Hermine Allen

Prof. Lorene Delany-Ullman

Writ 39B: Spring 2018

20 May 2018

America, Land of the Discriminated: How Ocean Vuong and Gloria Anzaldua Use

Metaphors to Illustrate Their Immigrant Experience

Immigration has been a controversial topic in America, especially since President Donald

Trump stepped in office. The President has enforced policies such as a travel ban from eight

countries with a mostly Muslim population, cancelation of DACA, and increased arrests of

undocumented immigrants in the country (Pierce and Selee). As more policies are enforced,

more immigrants suffer the consequences, resulting in feelings of alienation and displacement.

These emotions are expressed and confronted by Gloria Anzaldua, a queer Chicana writer and

feminist activist, in her academic discourse “How to Tame a Wild Tongue” from her book

Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza” (“Gloria E. Anzaldua”). Ocean Vuong, a

Vietnamese immigrant with an education from Brooklyn College, wrote “A Letter to My Mother

That She Will Never Read” to convey the same emotions in his public discourse. As these works

were published in 1987 and 2017, respectively, they were inspired by current day events.

Anzaldua’s text was in response to the Chicano movement in the 1960’s, which was a movement

in which Chicanos defended their heritage and language, despite the deprecatory conceptions of

this race at the time (“Chicano Movement”). Meanwhile, Vuong’s literacy narrative was

published in The New Yorker around the time when President Donald Trump was elected as

president, and the enforcement of immigration policies became a hot-topic in America (“Ocean

Vuong”). Vuong most likely was inspired to share his personal story as an immigrant to
 Allen 2

humanize immigrants rather than criminalize them. While both authors contribute to the

conversation of race in America by highlighting themes of cultural identity, feelings of

alienation, and marginalization through their immigrant experience, they do so using distinct

rhetorical strategies to appeal to their respective audiences. Anzaldua and Vuong use powerful

metaphors to illustrate their message and establish an empathetic tone. These metaphors provide

a type of vivid, illustrative rhetoric that emotionally moves Anzaldua’s audience of Chicanos and

Mexicans and Vuong’s audience consisting of intelligent, literary readers of The New Yorker.

Comparing these strategies in Anzaldua’s and Vuong’s texts ultimately reveals the importance of

cultural identity and the social barriers experienced by immigrants.

Vuong uses a vivid metaphor of butterflies as an immigrant symbol representing the

hazardous journey to America to evoke

feelings of empathy from his audience of

educated readers of The New Yorker. He uses

descriptive language to help his readers

visualize a colony of butterflies migrating

south, as pictured in fig. 1 to the right, “…

their wings folding slowly, as if being put

Fig. 1. A colony of monarch butterflies
flying through the sky from “Monarchs –
away, before snapping once, into flight”
Flowers in Flight.” WKDZ Radio,
www.wkdzradio.com/2016/09/26/monarchs-
(Vuong). Since Trump’s election, immigrants
flowers-in-flight/22483777/?pid=527666.
are seen as a threat to America, viewed as criminals and considered immutable to American

culture. However, Vuong portrays immigrants as beautiful, delicate creatures, saying, “It only

takes a single night of frost to kill off an entire generation” (Vuong). Vuong’s claim is implying

that as butterflies are frail creatures that do not pose a threat to anyone, so too are immigrants
 Allen 3

frail and harmless. Through this specific metaphor, he humanizes immigrants like himself as real

beings with real lives, counteracting the misconception that immigrants endanger the wellbeing

and safety of Americans. He continues throughout his emotional narrative of his childhood to use

the metaphor of butterflies as a representation of family and symbol of hope, stating “Sometimes,

I imagine the monarchs fleeing not winter but the napalm clouds of your youth, in Vietnam. I

imagine them flying out from the blazed blasts unscathed, their tiny black-and-red wings

flickering like charred debris, so that, looking up, you can no longer fathom the explosion they

came from, only a family of butterflies floating in clean, cool air, their wings finally, after so

many conflagrations, fireproof” (Vuong). Again, Vuong refers to the butterflies as having “tiny

black-and-red wings flickering like charred debris…” illustrating the fragility and delicate

characteristics of the butterfly and comparing to himself and his family escaping the war. This

phrase evokes sadness and sympathy in his readers, as Vuong relays the immigrant experience

using the contrasting image of something so beautiful and pure as a butterfly emerging from the

violent explosions of war. While this image evokes sadness, it also represents hope of a better

life in a foreign land, as that is the main reason immigrants move to America. This use of

metaphorical language appeals to his academic audience as it provides imagery and creative

aspect of writing, which one can expect to stumbleupon when flipping through the pages of the

The New Yorker, as it is a magazine that features a wide variety of literary works from political

satires to personal essays. Vuong connects with his audience using this metaphor in hopes to

shed light on the struggles of immigrating and adjusting to a new country.

Like Vuong, Anzaldua also uses a metaphor to illustrate the alienation of being an

immigrant; however, she relays her message to her scholarly audience of white males and her

Chicano and Mexican audience. She begins with a story of her at the dentist being told to control
 Allen 4

her tongue as the doctor probed around in her mouth (33). As the dentist attempts to perform a

procedure, Anzaldua cannot help but move her tongue, which angered the doctor and made him

exclaim, “We’re going to have to control your tongue… I’ve never seen anything as strong or as

stubborn” (33). This leads to Anzaldua to ask the question of how to tame a wild tongue. The

metaphor gives the reader a literal image of controlling one’s tongue to symbolize how her

language was shunned and viewed as inferior by others. The “taming of the tongue” represents

how Chicanos are being forced to adhere to American culture by being discouraged from

speaking Spanish. She recalls being punished for speaking Spanish in recess as a child, being

told to speak ‘American’ if she wants to be American (34). As she grew older, Anzaldua

defended her language and heritage, calling it a part of her identity. She responds to criticism of

her language by exclaiming, “Wild tongues can’t be tamed, they can only be cut out” (34). No

matter how hard society tries to make people like Anzaldua conform to their expectations of how

one should talk, Anzaldua argues that her tongue cannot be tamed. The only way to silence her is

to cut it out. Anzaldua understands the effectiveness of using metaphors to relay her message.

She uses the image of the tongue to further describe her linguistic identity when she proclaims,

“I will no longer be made to feel ashamed of existing. I will have my voice: Indian, Spanish,

white. I will have my serpent's tongue - my woman's voice, my sexual voice, my poet's voice. I

will overcome the tradition of silence” (Anzaldua). Her she compares her tongue to that of a

serpent’s, which readers perceive as sly and deceitful. However, Anzaldua uses this image to

portray her shamelessness and many voices that make her who she is. She uses her metaphor as

rhetorical means for comparison, allowing the reader to think from a different perspective. It is

important for her audience of primarily white, male scholars to hear about this issue, especially

since the 80s was a time when society was ruled by male patriarchy. Anzaldua utilizes this
 Allen 5

metaphor to address men as part of the problem. Her metaphor offers an eloquence in her

academic writing that makes her text more interesting and relatable to her audience and

community, giving them a literal image of a resisting tongue (“What Is Metaphor, and How Does

It Work?”). Anzaldua attempts to elicit feelings of empathy from her male, scholarly audience by

describing her difficult childhood and current struggle to embrace her identity because of

society’s expectations. The metaphor of “taming the tongue” continues to set a tone of empathy

in her text, as her audience of Chicanos can most likely relate to the identity crisis in which they

must conform to American standards to fit in. Pathos is used to elicit empathy on the readers as

she remembers her difficult childhood, attempting to conform to society as an outcast.

Both Vuong and Anzaldua shed light on their experience as immigrants. Their use of

metaphors to convey a greater idea helps their respective audiences gain a new perspective on

the social and emotional aspects of being an immigrant. By comparing the two authors, readers

can observe how the issues immigrants faced have been an ongoing struggle. By portraying their

message in the form of a metaphor, readers envision what it is like to experience alienation and

marginalization, and as a result feel empathetic towards the author. Coming from a different

culture and speaking a different language marks the modern immigrant as unworthy of being a

citizen of America, despite being the “land of the free.” After reading Vuong and Anzaldua’s

texts, readers should be more inclined to create a change in the social construct our country as

created: that immigrants are a threat to the nation. Rather, America is a nation of immigrants,

benefitting from the contributions immigrants have to offer.

 Allen 6

Works Cited

Anzaldua, Gloria. “How to Tame a Wild Tongue.” Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza,

Aunt Lute Books, 1987, US < https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B5-OfM-

v_D05ZHFyUzNLc1BRM3c/view>.

“Chicano Movement.” Brown.edu, 22 June 2005,

<http://www.brown.edu/Research/Coachella/chicano.html>. Accessed 29 April 2018.

“Gloria E. Anzaldua.” Poetry Foundation, 2018, Chicago, Illinois

<https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/gloria-e-anzaldua> Accessed 29 April 2018.

“Ocean Vuong.” Poetry Foundation, 2018, Chicago, Illinois

<https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/ocean-vuong>. Accessed 29 April 2018.

Pierce, Sarah, and Andrew Selee. “Immigration under Trump: A Review of Policy Shifts in the

Year Since the Election.” Migrationpolicy.org, 22 Jan. 2018,

www.migrationpolicy.org/research/immigration-under-trump-review-policy-shifts.

Vuong, Ocean. “A Letter I Wrote to My Mother That She Will Never Read.” The New Yorker,

13 May 2017 < https://www.newyorker.com/culture/personal-history/a-letter-to-my-

mother-that-she-will-never-read>. Accessed 29 April 2018.

“What Is Metaphor, and How Does It Work?” Creative Multilingualism, 22 May 2017,

<www.creativeml.ox.ac.uk/what-metaphor-and-how-does-it-work>. Accessed 27 May

2018.