The main theme of “Take the Tortillas Out of Your Poetry” is the antithetical relationship between censorship and liberation. This essay was written at a time when censorship and book banning was in the headlines. Author Salman Rushdie received death threats due to the publication of his novel Satanic Verses (1988). Furthermore, the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), under pressure from right-wing interest groups, began adding restrictions to their grantees’ projects in the late 1980s, thereby hindering free speech. Anaya’s essay responds to this trend and argues that marginalized groups are disproportionately impacted. In regard to the NEA debacle, Anaya writes, “The censors assumed the right to keep these creative works away from all of us. Censors, I have concluded, are afraid of our liberation” (72). Since the author views literature as a road to liberation, he views censorship as the greatest obstacle to that liberation.

Indeed, Anaya decries different types of censorship, each a form of marginalization. First, there is self-censorship, in which people silence aspects of their culture to better fit into mainstream society. For example, his friend refuses to submit bilingual works to the NEA even though his English-only works are not his best.