Bamboo Ceiling

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The Bamboo Ceiling American society overlooks immigrants; their opinions, protests, and needs are ignored and brushed away from the spotlight. One reason for this is the language barrier they face. In her essay, Mother Tongue, Amy Tan discusses how both first generation and second generation immigrants from non-English speaking countries, specifically China, are silenced by their white counterparts due to their unconventional English. A first generation immigrant is someone who was born on foreign grounds and immigrated to their current country of residence, and a second generation immigrant is a child of a first generation immigrant. First generation Asian immigrants face a “bamboo ceiling” that their voices cannot penetrate. When they speak …show more content…

Traditional, conventional English is the norm in American society. Second generation immigrants, having grown up in America, are well aware of this; however, the English they were surrounded by in their homes directly contrasts it with its use of sentence structures and idioms from the language of their parents’ home country. They face a troubling dichotomy, the English that comes naturally to them is different enough that it will be looked down upon in school and the workplace, but that is the method in which they feel most comfortable expressing their ideas. They are often fluent in both American English and the English of their family life, but they may find it difficult to switch between the two. Tan discloses that, “other Asian-American students whose English spoken in their homes might also be described as ‘broken’...they also have teachers steering them away from writing.” She brings up how statistically, Asian-Americans score lower on standardized English tests than they do in other subjects such as math and science, and as a result they are pushed away from literary careers. This silences Asian-Americans as a minority. Without Asian-Americans who can convey their thoughts and opinions in writing, they are ignored and overlooked. Without representation, no one can know their struggles and issues in their community, so they assume that there are no issues. Without people within the group who can successfully collect and share their narrative in writing, they are erased from the overarching American story, in a land formed by and for immigrants and

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