Mother Tongue 'And From The Poets In The Kitchen'

After reading Amy Tan’s, “Mother Tongue” and Paule Marshall’s, “From the Poets in the Kitchen” I pondered and formed several opinions and reactions about these two pieces of literature. Both stories compare and contrast in many ways. In Marshall’s story, she explains how listening to her mother and her friend’s in the kitchen throughout her years as a child had blossomed her as a writer and a person. Marshall reveals instances of how this occurred and what effects it had on her mother, her friends, and the people around her. In Tan’s story, she distinctly conveys the idea that we’re all classified by how we speak. Tan writes about instances regarding her mother and her own affliction living in America. Both of these stories have a great influence on me, as a developing adult and the way I think. Tan’s story directly relates to the prejudices that some people may have experienced some point in their life, particularly immigrants and their families. Tan discusses how her mothers “broken” English denies how much she actually …show more content…
At first, I found this unrealistic because you must be able to ask questions and engage in order to learn. But after putting further thought into Marshall’s assertion I found that people have their own ways of gaining knowledge. Marshall mentions how she became a better writer by listening to conversations of different topics by her mother and friends in their kitchen. In her story, Marshall says, “While my sister and I sat at a smaller table over in a corner doing our homework, they talked - endlessly, passionately, poetically, and with impressive range. No subject was beyond them.” Marshall’s mother and her friends talked about topics like politics, economic issues, and war. These brief conversations between her mother and her mother’s friends aided her in developing her language