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As communication scholars endeavor to increase the diversity of our subject of study, we must recognize the impact such diversity has on our understandings of rhetorical practice, form, and theory as well as on the way the reader and text interact, especially when the reader (like myself) is privileged and white in a nation where whiteness itself is a form of privilege.' One text that offers an entry into all these areas is Gloria Anzaldua's "Speaking in Tongues: A Letter to Third World Women Writers," originally written for Words in Our Pockets, the Feminist Writers' Guild Handbook, and later appearing in This Bridge Called My Back and Speaking For Ourselves: Women of the South, all of which bring the letter to an audience broader than the one named in its title.
Anzaldua, a Chicana tejana lesbian-feminist author and activist, has played a central role in opening the borders of Women's Studies. As an activist and scholar, Anzaldua is committed to challenging those in the academy to rethink how our pedagogy is raced, sexed and classed. Throughout her work, she moves between English and Spanish, exploring the process and purpose of communication, and constantly reminding readers of her role as a person positioned in the border between two cultures. As part of her exploration of political and personal borderlands, she, like other Chicana feminists, creates a space in which to perform identity (Flores). Of her many writings, one text particularly represents both her rhetorical style and her conception of rhetoric: "Speaking in Tongues."
In the first section of her letter, dated 21 mayo 1980, Anzaldua establishes that women of color write, in authentic ways, because Anzaldua herself writes. Anzaldua also makes explicit her attention to form when she describes how she "began [the letter] as a poem, a long poem. I tried to turn it into an essay but the result was wooden, cold," so, she finally chose the letter form, which would better "approximate the intimacy and immediacy" she wanted (165). The introductory paragraphs create a scene where the letter is written as part of her life, to expose her life. Instead of being written within the confines of office walls, she writes "naked in the sun" (165). Why this level of exposure? Because...