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

a lot of her time thinking and writing about it. Just the other day she was made familiar of all the different types “Englishes” she uses. One time she was giving a lecture to a large crowd of people on her book “The Joy Luck Club”, when she noticed her mother was in the audience. This was the 1st time she attended one of Amy’s talks and she heard her using a kind of English she had never used with her before. A scholarly English that was learned from books and was carefully written.
A more recent example is when she was walking down the street with her mother and husband. As they were talking she said “Not waste money on that”. No one perceived a difference in her English because that was their intimate language. A type of English she grew up with and used with her family.
The author points out that her mothers “broken” English negates how much she really understands. She reads weekly economic reports, books and even talks with her stockbroker daily. Although people still apprehend her thoughts as incomplete as a result of her “broken” English. The writer states that as she was growing up she viewed her mother’s ideas as “limited” because of her difficulties in English.
Amy points out that her mother had realized the drawback she faced in life due to her English.

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

understand.