A Bilingual Journey From Two Different Cultures

Maya Angelou and Amy Tan discuss religious problems and culture differences in their literature. The authors have captured these differences by their past experiences of friends and family. Both authors come from a diverse culture, but both face the same harsh society of the American culture and beliefs. The Author's both tell about situations in their short stories of being outcasts and coming from different racial backgrounds and trying to triumph over these obstacles. Angelou and Tan both have a very unique writing ability and style in their short stories.

Tan’s attitude towards her mother throughout the essay can be described as understanding yet embarrassed. Tan is understanding of her mother throughout the essay because she constantly says that her English differs when talking to her mom versus when talking to others. She does this because she knows her mom is not as well-spoken as others, but Tan still wants her mom to be comfortable speaking English with everyone. Tan even changes many things in later writings because she envisions her mother reading it, and wants to know that her mother will understand everything she puts into the writing even though she speaks “broken English.” Tan was also embarrassed of her mother in the essay because she speaks of times when Tan blamed her own mother

I find it interesting that while Rodriguez and Anzaldua came from comparable backgrounds they feel very differently about similar issues. Rodriguez believes that education should not be bilingual for children who come from Spanish speaking homes. Anzaldua on the other hand thinks that people should not be squashing the culture of these people, and should do what they can to help them preserve it. I think that in that sense one could compare Anzaldua and Rodriguez to the idea of American culture, as each are one extreme of how we view it. On the one hand we have Anzaldua, the idea that America is a melting pot, combining all of the different cultures of the different people living here to come up

In the work of Amy Tan’s “Mother’s Tongue” she provides a look into how she adapted her language to assimilate into American culture. She made changes to her language because her mother heavily relied on her for translation. She was the voice of her mother, relaying information in standard English to

On one side, Amy Tan “Mother Tongue” shows how Amy Opens doors for her mother. One example of this is when Amy says “Just last week, I was walking down the street with my mother, and I again found myself conscious of the English I was using, the English I do use with her. We were talking about the price of new and used furniture and I heard myself saying this: "Not waste money that way." My husband was with us as well, and he didn't notice any switch in my English. And then I realized why. It's because over the twenty years we've been together, I've often used that same kind of English with him, and sometimes he even uses it with me. It has become our language of intimacy, a different sort of English that relates to family talk, the language I grew up with ” (Tan 363). This opens a door for her mother by being in and understand a conversation that she is not normally involved in. This is as simple as Amy talking to her mom in her mother’s language. This is similar to an adult explaining something to a child in the in

In “Mother Tongue,” Amy Tan an American writer, shares her experience growing up with the family where no one speaks perfect English, and how it affected her education and her life. As the second generation of Chinese immigrants, Tan faces more problems than her peers do. Her mother, who speaks limited English needs Tan to be her “Translator” to communicate with the native English speakers. Tan states, “I was ashamed of her English” (2). Her mother is like a burden to her, at least in Tan’s early years. But the cultural conflict she becomes the theme of her writing and it is under this situation she wrote many novels and essays including “Mother Tongue.”

Amy Tan’s literacy narrative “Mother Tongue” is about the different dialects of English, she is familiar with. She explains that her intelligence is judged by the way she speaks. Amy Tan, explains memories from her life where she encounters many forms of English. Her mother, a Chinese immigrant spoke “broken English.” She describes her mother as someone who was able to understand English, well the mother claims that she understands everything, but when it came to speaking, she spoke without the correct grammar. Due to her mothers broken English, Amy Tan has adapted to the type of English her mother speaks, their own type of English language. Tan feels as if the English she is speaking with it outside world is more complex than the English she

On the other hand the main focus on Tan’s story is to show the beautiful and passionate side of her mother that people can't see. Tan describes how all of the English’s that she grew up with, normal English and "mother tongue" English, has shaped her first outlook of life. She writes, "But to me, my mother's

Mother Tongue is a story that describes how Amy Tan’s mother was treated unfairly because of her “broken English”. As the second generation of Chinese immigrants, Tan faces more problems than her peers do. Her mom, who speaks “limited” English, needs Tan to be her “translator” in order to communicate with the native English speakers. Tan has felt ashamed of her mother “broken” language at first. She then contemplates her background affected her life and her study. However, she changes her thought at the end since she realizes things behind language might be more valuable than language itself sometimes. Through the various different literary devices and rhetorical strategies such as the ethos, pathos, and logos appeals, as well as a

She wants the audience to know right away that even though she is about to tell you the story of a difficult childhood, she did reach her goal in the end. After making this statement, Tan dives into her past and how she came to be where she is today. Her mother is the next most important point of discussion. Her mother influenced her writing style as well as her beliefs about her culture and heritage. ?Just last week, I was walking down the street with my mother, and I again found myself conscious of the English I was using, the English I do use with her? (Tan, 2002, p. 36). The broken up English her mother uses is the next issue Tan focuses on. ??everything is limited, including people?s perceptions of the limited English speaker? (Tan, 2002, p. 36). Lastly, she talks about her education and the role it had on her deciding what she wanted to do with her life. ?Fortunately, I happen to be rebellious in nature and enjoy the challenge of disproving assumptions made about me? (Tan, 2002, p. 39). By structuring the essay in order of importance, Tan reinforces her message that you can be anything you desire even with a different culture than the norm.

The purpose of Amy Tan’s essay, “Mother Tongue,” is to show how challenging it can be if an individual is raised by a parent who speaks “limited English” (36) as Tan’s mother does, partially because it can result in people being judged poorly by others. As Tan’s primary care giver, her mother was a significant part of her childhood, and she has a strong influence over Tan’s writing style. Being raised by her mother taught her that one’s perception of the world is heavily based upon the language spoken at home. Alternately, people’s perceptions of one another are based largely on the language used.

From an article called My Mother’s English of Vision Across Americas, the author called Amy Tan intend to tell us that the differences between her mother’s English and standard English. Plus, the process of how she finds these differences. Moreover, she tells us the influence of it to her mother, even to her. She makes some examples to prove that her mother suffered from unfair treatment because of her mother’s nonstandard English. In other words, English limit affect the daily life of her mother. Therefore, she always pretends to be her mother when she was fifteen years old. When she grows up, she was ashamed of her English and find why her English is different from other people. Then, she tries her best to improve her English.

The essays, "Mother Tongue" by Amy Tan and "Public and Private Language" by Richard Rodriguez are recollections of both of the author’s personal encounters and difficulties with the gap that was created between their families by differences in languages. These two writers grew up with bilingual families, in which English was not the primary language. Consequently, they had a hard time accepting and understanding the issues surrounding the different languages they spoke with their families at home, and within society. Because of this, the gap between their public and private languages that had been created through the introduction of a second language slowly grew larger, and eventually impacted their relationships with their family and caused them to view them in a different light. In their writing, Both Tan and Rodriguez reflect on their personal experiences and memories and illuminate the effects that a private language can have on various aspects of life.

As an adult, Tan understands that her mother’s English is the language of intimacy. She now understands that her “mother’s expressive command belies how much she actually understands” Her mother reads “The Wall street Journal” and converses with their stockbroker on matters Tan doesn’t comprehend. It becomes evident that her initial

This dialect, Tan says, became their "language of intimacy, a different sort of English that relates to family talk, the language [she] grew up with" (Tan 589). This type of language creates an identity for Tan, one which she was ashamed of growing up. This feeling of shame later backfired as an adult in her fiction writing. She wrote to prove she had "mastery over the English language" with large words, unheard of to the common ear, and sentences she thought were "wittily crafted." But as Tan matured, she realized she should envision an audience for her stories; this audience was her mother. She began to write stories using "all the Englishes" she grew up with. As she found out, this change of her own conception of language enriched her writing and added to her ethos. After all, her mother’s language, as she heard it, was "vivid, direct, full of observation and imagery." "That was the language that had helped shaper the way [she] saw things, expressed things, made sense of the world" (Tan 590). Her "mother tongue" is her identity as a writer, and she learned that someone’s English does not reflect the quality of what he/she has to say.