Oh Mom, Oh Honey: Why Do You Have To Say That?

‘The deep bond between mother and daughter is reinforced in the text at a number of

An exploration of Mother Tongue reveals that parental expectations places immense pressure on children and causes them to fail in their pursuit of their dreams. This is also clear in Only Daughter. The narrator in Mother Tongue describes a speech that he delivered: “The talk was going well enough, until I remembered one major difference that made the whole talk sound wrong. My mother was in the room” (Tan, 1990). From this description, it is evident that the narrator’s mother held her back from delivering a captivating talk. The mother had established a manner of speaking that was different from how the narrator was delivering the talk. This can be taken to mean that the mother expected the daughter to deliver the

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.

In the poem, “Mothers and daughters”, she writes about the relationship of mothers and daughters. The speaker of the poem is mother and she is describing mothers’ relationship with their daughters. In the beginning of the poem, she gives insight of mothers and daughters share love with each other. They have close bonding and have a perfect relationship. Later, the mother describes the dark side of their relationship where they have conflicts with each other. “Mothers and daughters” is the poem which illustrates the complicated relationship between mothers and daughters as they share love with each other, but they have conflicts too.

The article, the book, and I, talk about how daughters feel their mothers don’t know them and that they don’t know their mothers. They talk about how a daughter listens to her mother, but there is a certain point in a young woman 's mind where they decide they want to see and explore new ideas. In conclusion, they all talk about the point in a daughter 's life where she and her mother don’t get along very well and the daughter tries to take charge of her life.

I spent the majority of my life being raised by a single mother due to my parents’ divorce. Because of my parents’ divorce, my mother stated firmly that I had changed and became a difficult child. I remember rebelling, suffering with low self-esteem and self-worth and blaming myself for the absence of my father. It was not until I was well into womanhood that I found peace within myself, as well as with my nonresidential father. Through the preparation for this study, I have a better understanding of the external and internal factors that can and will affect the father-daughter relationship.

In being her daughter she doesn't see her mother like everyone else does. To Tan her “English is perfectly clear, perfectly clear, perfectly natural. It’s my mother tongue. Her language, as I hear it, is vivid, direct, full of observation and imagery. That was the language that helped shape the way I saw things, expressed things, made sense of the

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

The author incorporates stories that she has experienced with her mother, which includes the exotic way her mother speaks. “When I was fifteen, she used to have me call people on the phone to pretend I was she,” expressed Tan (Tan 54). The author continues to explain the story of having to call a stockbroker in New York and demand them to cash out her mother’s account. Tan also narrates a scenario from a time she had to go to a hospital where her mother had a CAT scan performed. “She said she had spoken very good English, her best English, no mistakes,” included Tan (Tan 54).

In Tannen’s book, she starts off by addressing the differences between men and women conversate, then shifts her attention to offer a solution towards the end of the book. In chapters one through nine, Tannen tells the reader of the differences in conversation men and women have, and how they came to be. One example is the goals men and women have in life. Men’s goal in life is to strive for independence in conversation, and avoid failure, which according to Tannen mean that they come up with their own ideas, not following others. While the goal for women is to try and preserve intimacy. In order to receive affection, women try to find similarities in each other. Tannen thinks this occurs because boys are taught to compete when playing games in the play yard, and women are taught to stick together and socialize. Throughout the book Tannen shows characteristics that men and women and how they are different. At the end of the book Tannen tells the reader that although there are many differences between both genders, and it may be hard to understand each other in conversation, it is possible. According to Tannen by understand these differences one will be able to recognize them in conversation, and understand what the other person is trying to say, or realize why they said that. The chapters appear this way because before Tannen can come up with solution to get men and women to better understand the misunderstandings that occur, she has to inform

The short-story “A Conversation with My Father”, by Grace Paley, combines several themes and the author uses the elements of abandonment, denial, irony, humor and foreshadowing, to bring this emotional story together. This story is mainly about the relationship between a parent and his child. The primary characters are a father, and his child. There is no mention of whether the child is his daughter or son. The tone of the story and the conversations made me believe that the old man has a daughter, and hence I will refer to the child as his daughter.

Tannen presents the evidence that she will analyze by showing the relationship with her mother. Her mother is talking to Tannen, and she writes a research paper on the mother bonding with daughter relationship. She also writes from her students’ experience with their mothers. An additional statement she makes is that she is a linguist. For this research paper, she interviewed many women. From my point of view, I think Tannen chose the evidence to show both the mother's’ side and daughters’ point of view. For example, a student of Tannen was talking about her mother’s way of cutting tomatoes. An additional example would be when Tannen is discussing about her mom coming over to her new workplace and new life.

Imagine that one day, your parents inform you that they plan to come and visit in the metropolitan area where you live. A couple of days later, you find out that your mother disappeared in the subway station on her journey and “it's been one week since Mom went missing” (Shin 3). In the book, Please Look After Mom, Kyung Sook Shin writes about a narrative where individual members of the family reflect, discover, and reevaluate the role of a mother in the family after her sudden disappearance. Throughout the story, Shin uses a second-person narrative structure and the themes of motherhood and self-sacrifice to pull on the reader’s heartstrings with the message that family members must be able to show love, gratitude, and respect for their mother

There is much beauty in communication. This semester, we have been able to use language to discuss and question such abstract, prevalent concepts that united a group of students with different experiences, backgrounds and stories. The open dialogue that was implemented in the classroom allowed us to all feel comfortable sharing our most vulnerable thoughts and memories, and this level of comfortability is hard to establish. The women that you invited to speak: Kristen, Naomi and Jae, all blended perfectly into our space. Additionally, the topics these women brought to the floor correlate to our readings in Stimpson’s Critical Terms for the Study of Gender, allowing us to expand on the literature and make real life connections to the texts. Therefore, Kristen, Naomi and Jae all stem from different backgrounds and specializations, yet have overcome many of the hardships that many of us are currently struggling with, making their messages both engaging and applicable.

The contrast in the grandmother’s and the great aunt’s parenting style is self-explanatory. The grandmother’s affection was overzealous while the great aunts’ display is hollow. The girls are affected in a way that paints their image of love, their grandmother taught them to be intuitive of other’s feelings, while their great aunts’ have shown them that people are not always selfless. The most important thing the girls have yet to experience in a parent/child relationship however is a true bond of love and full awareness of who the other is as a person. The girls so far have been taught to feign emotions that are proper, and to show surface level respect for their mother figures.