Amy Tan Mother Tongue

Amy Tan a Chinese American writer describes in her essay her mothers struggles due to the limitation of her English. Peoples perception of her is as if she has lower intelligence because of her “broken” language. Tan also mentions that in her early life her mothers way of speaking limited her opinion of her. She points out the fact that because she liked a challenge she didn’t follow the typical Asian-American stereotype and became a writer instead. In “Mother Tongue” Amy Tan talks about her mothers difficulties in the modern day USA due to her imperfection in English. The author argues that she is not a “scholar of English or a literature” but instead a writer. She notes that she has always been interested by language in daily life, spending

When the producer was growing up she would call and impersonate her mother in order to get people to listen to her. One time she had to yell at her mother’s stock broker because he didn’t send her check on time. Another example is when she got a CAT scan and the hospital lost the results and didn’t even apologize to her. But when the author spoke with them they made assure it would found and apologized. Amy Tan admits that the language spoken in the family, notably in immigrant families, plays a significant role in shaping the language of the child. Tan acknowledges that Asian students do better in science and math but struggle in English. She mentions that maybe teachers discourage them away from writing and into math and science because of their “broken” English. The author decided to change her major from pre-med to English even though people said that writing was her worst talent. She started writing nonfiction at that time but eventually in 1985 began to write fiction. In the beginning she wrote well thought out complex sentences, but later realized she should shift to a more “simple” English so her mother and everyone that used “broken” or “limited” English could understand could