Comparing Amy Tan's 'Mother Tongue' and Gloria Anzuldua's 'How To Tame A Wild Tongue'

Tan goes on to explain what sociological impacts she experienced based on her upbringing. She concludes that her mother should not be judged based on her “watered down” English, and that people should be more accepting to those who cannot express their feelings in English.

Tan shows that she is embarrassed in her family for their lacking of proper American manners. Although at the time she felt ashamed, the words spoken by her mother, “Inside you must always be Chinese. You must be proud you are different. Your only shame is to have shame” became better understood later in life. In Amy Tan's work, the strong use of description of both the event that are occurring and Amy’s feelings about them, draws the reader in and makes them feel as if they are part of the action. Tan's Chinese-American culture and life stories are imprinted in her writing which gives the reader an opportunity to gain knowledge about the way of life in her family, friends, and even the Chinese culture. Tan's main purpose of writing is to inform and educate people about growing up as a minority in the American society.

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

Amy Tan’s ,“Mother Tongue” and Maxine Kingston’s essay, “No Name Woman” represent a balance in cultures when obtaining an identity in American culture.  As first generation Chinese-Americans both Tan and Kingston faced many obstacles. Obstacles in language and appearance while balancing two cultures. Overcoming these obstacles that were faced and preserving heritage both women gained an identity as a successful American.

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

4. Some specific situations where Tan says her mother’s “limited English” was a handicap is when her mother could not be able to talk directly with people, or would not be taken serious by the people she talked to.

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.

She also incorporates problem and solution when she is describing how she had to talk for her mother. Her belief is that people will not take you seriously if you do not speak proper English, and to prove this, she shows how her mother encountered that kind of attitude often. Tan describes how she had to call the stockbroker because her mother was concerned about not getting a check, and how the hospital would not look for a lost CAT scan until Tan was called to mediate. Even though the mother speaks English, Tan still needs to act as a translator.

She feels very embarrassed and wishes she were American. In the end of the story, she writes a quote that her mother actually told her, “You want to be the same as American girls on the outside. But inside you must always be Chinese. You must be proud you are different. Your only shame is to have shame” (Tan). In the end the character understood and knew that her mother was right. Tan was not confident with her Chinese identity when she was young, and that influenced some of her works like “Fish Cheeks”.

Amy Tan and Junot Diaz on their stories they talked about they don’t speak their languages. Both of them find it difficult to speak different languages like Junot Diaz he went Santo Domingo for a vacation with his wife and it’s been twenty years that he has been over and people over there looking at him cause he doesn’t look Dominican and he barely speaks Spanish. For Amy tan she talked about how her mother was a stockbroker in New York and the people she work with doesn’t understand her English and she is Chinese. People this world will look at different cause of your Ethnicity and if you don’t speak their language they will treat wrong.

In the story Tan brought up how people in america could not fully understand her mother. “Yet some of my friends tell me they could understand 50 percent of what my mother says. Some say they understand 80 or 90 percent. Some say they understand none” (Tan 1013). The lack of understanding her friends had on her mother did show that americans only know their own mother tongue and this lead to problems for her mother. Tan brought up a few occurrences where she would have to pretend to be her mother while speaking so she would be treated right. “Then she began to talk more loudly. “What he want, I come to New York tell him front of his boss, you cheating me?’” (Tan 1014). Tan understood exactly what her mother said and had to translate it accordingly in order for her mother to get fair treatment. Another story Tan used another story that gave her purpose a very strong

“We are a country where people of all backgrounds, all nations of origin, all languages, all religions, all races, can make a home. America was built by immigrants” Hillary Clinton stated. What she means in this quote is immigrants had a huge influence on America. America would be extremely different without them, without the diverse population here we would not know or be exposed to the different cultures, languages, and religions that we know today.

I was born in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, and live in the U.S. I went to Lowell High School and took all ESL because I didn’t know much about English. In order to succeed, I started to read and speak more English than my first language, yet I speak Khmer at home because my parent doesn 't want me to lose my native language. In America, there are a lot of immigrants that are trying to come and to get a better opportunity. According to Joel Swerdlow, in “Changing America,” “before 1965 more than three-quarters of all immigrants to the U.S. came from Europe, owing largely to quotas that favored northern Europeans.” (313). In 1965 Congress removed those quotas, and since then more than 60 percent of immigrants have come from Asia, Africa, the Caribbean, the Middle East, and Latin America. However, do children of immigrants often feel they must lose their cultural identity in order to be American? Children of immigrants often feel they must lose their cultural identity because they are changing their own culture identity regarding three topics: Language, Dress, and Behavior.

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.