Amy Tan is a bestselling author born in 1952. She has written several novels focused on mother-daughter relationships. In Mother Tongue, Tan analyzes the different “Englishes” she uses in everyday life and why some are considered better than others. Tan’s mother, a Chinese immigrant, speaks in what some call a “broken” form of English (543). She claims her mother is treated unfairly because of her fractured language. Because Tan grew up speaking the English of her mother, she could understand her perfectly. Therefore, Tan would have to translate. For example, when Tan’s mother was in the hospital for a potential benign brain tumor, her doctors claimed to have lost the CAT scan, but when Tan spoke to them in perfect English, the doctors assured
