Summary Of Mother Tongue By Jose Luis

Americas Watch. 1991. El Salvador’s Decade of Terror: Human Rights since the Assassination of Archbishop Romero. New Haven and London: Yale University Press.

Demetria Martínez’s Mother Tongue is divided into five sections and an epilogue. The first three parts of the text present Mary/ María’s, the narrator, recollection of the time when she was nineteen and met José Luis, a refuge from El Salvador, for the first time. The forth and fifth parts, chronologically, go back to her tragic experience when she was seven years old and then her trip to El Salvador with her son, the fruit of her romance with José Luis, twenty years after she met José Luis. And finally the epilogue consists a letter from José Luis to Mary/ María after her trip to El Salvador. The essay traces the development of Mother Tongue’s principal protagonists, María/ Mary. With a close reading of the text, I argue how the forth

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.

The "Public and Private Language", by Richard Rodriguez and "Mother Tongue", by Amy Tan are great examples of how two immigrant families can have their similarities and differences. For a long time, the American people have looked at immigrants through their own eyes and perspectives. Never do people think to change gears and walk in the footsteps of a stranger. In this case, people need to look through the eyes of an immigrant and see that one immigrant family is not the same as the other. The different people may have connections with the same or different cultures, however, they have different obstacles and hardships with adjusting to a new way of living.

For twelve years (1980-1992), El Salvador suffered this brutal civil war and saw some of the worst human rights abuses in Latin American history. The government refused to attend peace talks by the FMLN and the FMLN refused to participate in elections knowing it results would be rigged. The military tried to kill all suspected rebels and the FMLN damaged anything that supported the government’s economy. Throughout the war there was so much human rights violations such as subjecting civilians to torture, forced disappearance, extrajudicial killing, mutilation, mass rape, massacres, summary executions, landmines and indiscriminate bombing. As the result, by the end of the civil war about 75,000 people were killed, sadly most of which were civilians in the wrong place at the wrong time. The intensity of military repression and constant fear provoked massive northern migration to the United States. By the mid-1980s almost one-fifth of the Salvadoran population was living in the United

The fact that hundreds of police officers, judges, investigators, presidential candidates, and of course thousands of Colombian citizens are murdered with the attitude of “so it goes” (Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse Five) shows that their Nation has been very badly damaged, psychologically as well as physically.

Culture is the way you act, react, and think, it is something that never stays the same but malleable. In Richard Rodriguez’s essay, “Blaxicans and other Reinvented Americans,” the author wrote about America combining cultures and how assimilation happens naturally to people even if the people do not know it.Amy Tan’s essay “Mother Tongue” also examines how cultures are able to pass on and how people may use them for their future.In “Blaxicans and Other Reinvented Americans” and “ Mother Tongue”, both Richard Rodriguez and Amy Tan show that immigrants have helped shape the American culture by them interacting with on-coming immigrants and combining cultures and as a result, both sides leave with a new idea to combine the cultures or add on

El Salvador is a war-torn country. Over the decades, this country has had to deal with political and economical disequilibrium. By the 1970’s, a savage and vicious civil war started. The government started to target citizens they believed were supportive of economical and political reform. One of the most preeminent examples was Archbishop Oscar Romero who was shot to death in 1980. A war erupted between the government and the rebels who were against the government’s ideas and ways of ruling. The U.S. continually provided the government with financial and military support, and they are believed to be the only reason why the government stayed in the war. The war ended around the early 2000’s, but it left El Salvador in a broken state. Hundreds of thousands of Salvadorans fled between 1980 to 2000, and have resided in the United States ever since.

I was curious to see how El Salvador, one of the poorest countries in the world, uses its limited resources to simultaneously attend to individuals’ needs, make structural changes, and the impact it’s economy has had on their people. After doing my research I realized that El Salvador is a country where injustice reigns and upward mobility is not believed. Today, El Salvador, is one of the most violent country in the world and it’s a country plagued by violence, turmoil, and natural disaster with people hoping a continuous recovery. To have an understanding of El Salvador unfortunate circumstances one is to analyze the effects of the Civil War in El Salvador.

Mother Tongue Observational Analysis In the essay, Mother Tongue, by Amy Tan she uses words to do much more than just capture the reader’s attention. Tan not only recalls the past; she vividly includes the reader in her observations creating interest. In the beginning of her essay Tan states these very words, “I am not a scholar of English or literature.”

With the assassination of the Liberal Party presidential candidate Gaitan, who wanted to make Colombia not only safe but to help the poor as well, it started a chain of events. Creating 10 years of war and violence ‘La Violencia’ but forced the government to take action against the protests and the guerilla (Rinehart, 78). Many of the country’s poor turned to violence to make their voices heard to the government that was only thinking of themselves and

In the essay titled “Mother Tongue” by Amy Tan, first line of the essay has a very good grabber. The essay will surely catch reader’s attention to read more because Tan introduced how the essay will be on personal opinion, which I believe many likes to hear or listen to others opinion other than reading about facts that can be seen anywhere, for example online search engine. Tan might accomplish this in the essay as she pointed out how an English language could be a change with certain limits in everywhere. That line is a strong grabber that would capture reader’s attention as I was captured by it to read more. I am a lazy reader; yet, I was captured by Tan’s ‘hook sentence.’ I was curious to know how English language could be a change with

The line “ I began to write stories using all the Englishes I grew up with” is a very powerful line in the essay ( Tan 337). Tan’s personal struggle of having a mother who knows English as a second language creates issues for her throughout her life, but this line shows that she has learned to get past this hardship. Tan learning to embrace this side of her life lets other people in the same situation know that it shouldn’t be a bad thing. The whole line wraps up the essay in a neat little bow by playing on the Pathos of Tan’s life and drawing the essay to a nice conclusion thus showing how one little phrase can make a piece of literature great.

In Mother Tongue, we dive into a mother-daughter relationship that evolves through the power of language. It focuses on Tan's mother and how she struggled with the English dialect and how this helped forge a stronger bond between them both. Throughout the story, Tan does an excellent job in keeping the story very simple to read and understand while simultaneously hiding a lot of complexity and emotions in her work. She shows the readers how even simple writing can still hold a lot of power to move people without having to be an expert in the English language. We see a lot of emotions come through as we read her story and she shows the true passion of her relationship with her mother.

The essay is chiefly about the writer 's own rumination and judgment about how "broken English" compared to Standard English. Moreover it came to her sense that language not only "authorizes" individuals to participate as members of a designated community, it is also a essential key in enabling individuals to establish and define the dimensions of their identity. Though a lover of language and an erudite lover of language she is, she has never recognized this concept until she realized that she has never appeared eloquent and rhetoric in front of her mother.