Amy Tan Mother Tongue Summary

In the short story Mother Tongue by Amy Tan, the author, Tan, has a positive attitude towards her mother’s identity and language. We meet an author who, while being ashamed of her mother’s abilities in speaking the English language, is very proud to be her daughter. Tan’s mother’s limited English is humiliating for her during certain parts in the story. She learns to appreciate it more however, as she grows up. Her mother’s different use of the English language, is what shaped her into who she is as a writer and a person.
Everyone can relate to feeling some sort of embarrassment from their parents. A time when Tan feels humiliation from her mother is when they pay a visit to the stockbroker to yell at the manager about cheating the mother out …show more content…
They went to New York the following week and while her mother was speaking to the manager in her fragmented English, Tan was sitting in the chair with her face red from embarrassment. This was embarrassing for her because she had had to pretend. She had to pretend to be her mom on the phone so she could speak perfect English and they would take her mother seriously. However, she knows this which is why she has to speak multiple “Englishes”. She has to keep switching languages around different people. A time when Tan switches up her English is when she is talking to her crowd of people. She says things like “The intersection of memory once upon imagination”. In the beginning of the third paragraph, right when she is talking to her group, Tan mentions something that foreshadows the story. From the tone set, it seems like her mother’s presence is a negative thing and the reader can sense the tension during this part. This is ironic because who wouldn’t want their mother at their event? It is mentioned that her mother was in the room and made the whole talk sound wrong. She also talks about how her mother was listening to her speak in ways that she …show more content…
Her broken English may seem like a negative thing based on how people treat her because of it, but it has helped shape Tan into the person she now is. A time when it is evident that Tan felt joy from her mother’s limited English is when she writes about the different languages she uses. As thought by Tan, “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 world.” She got to see the from multiple views; the way her mother made her see it using her fractured language, and the way everyone else saw it using English. Tan was able to have different experiences that helped change her and allow her to grow in a positive view. Another time when Tan sees her mother’s restricted English in a satisfied way is when she talks about how became an English major during her first year of being enrolled in pre med. This shows the stereotype that immigrants are not fluent in English and won’t excel in it so they put them in classes with more math and science and try to steer them away from English majors. Tan breaks that stereotype and shows that she is just as good at speaking and writing English as the next person, and she has her mother to thank for that. She sees how much her mom got trampled on and taken advantage of due to her limited English. Tan