Mother Tongue by Amy Tan Essay

rey y a una reina de otro mundo” for those terms did not exist. Visceral detachment from one’s sense of identity stems from forced faith rather than independent self-reflection. By reading “Decolonizing the Mind” by Ngugi Wa Thiong’o, “Mother Tongue” by Amy Tan and “Aria” by Richard Rodriguez, I distinguish culture from identity. Culture is independent; it is everything: food, art, love, mannerisms, and behaviors of a group. Culture can infiltrate other regional traditions to create new fusions…

careless when talking to Tan’s mother. She was disregarded first, because of her age and second, because of her accent and english she spoke. Instead of looking at her as though she was a deranged old woman, they should have listened to her concerns rather than, asking her to leave without any explanation. Furthermore, I can not imagine how much stress she was going through given that, her husband and son died from brain tumors. What is familiar to me is how mother was treated by people in…

able to fully understand and analyze the excerpt titled “How To Tame A Wild Tongue,” provided by Gloria Anzaldua. When writing, I planned on identifying my audience as the oppressed Chicano people who related to what Anzaldua experienced, and also the possibly unknowingly oppressive Americans and Mexicans. My writing process was sporadic until I could get an outline mapped out. With the outline,…

tolerance for these individuals, take advantage of their situation to undervalue them. Amy Tan in her article “Mother Tongue” describe perfectly how people who immigrate to this country and try to fit in the society still have to handle with racial problems. It’s a story about a Chinese girl who narrates her life, and how her mother suffered because she didn’t speak English correctly. She narrates how her mother tried to communicate with others, but people didn’t “understand” or just ignored…

1. (Summary) List and Describe or Define the different “Lies” Ericsson discusses. (Response) Would you add any? List and describe them. In the ways we lie, Ericsson discusses roughly ten lies, but there are much more that can be added to this list. She describes the main ones we continuously use on a regular basis and the reasons for lying. The white lie, Facades, Ignoring the plain facts, Deflecting, Omission, Stereotypes & Clichés, Groupthink, Out & out lies, Dismissal, and Delusion. When…

The origin of America was based on immigration that created diversity in language, which today continues to increase. America, a melting Pot, a diversity of language and culture is somewhere where the technic of code switching is essential in life and to advance in the social latter. Even though everyone in America cannot speak Standard English because of that language barrier, they should not be looked down upon by the American society because there is not really a “correct” way of speaking.…

Both of my parents are immigrants. My mother, Lorna Julisa Gregorio-Granston, is from Guatemala a small Spanish speaking country in Central America. She moved to this country when she was only seven with one of her many aunts. Through the years I have spoken to my mother about the different struggles she went through moving to a new place. She has said that at first it was hard. When she first started school she spoke very little english but the english that she did speak was heavily shadowed…

How Does Society Affect American Literature? When you think of America you think of white picket fences, big houses, with perfect families eating around a person dinner table sharing about their day. Even though this isn’t the typical life for most Americans, how did the idea get there? How come everything is the way it is now? Today, I am here to show you these reasons and more. We have all heard a creation story, whether it was Adam and Eve or the Big Bang. A creation story told by the…

technology we have but have no doubt that at least every person you have encountered in your lifetime, has had struggled pretty badly with this problem at least once in their own lifetime. For instance, Amy Tan also had some trouble with literacy, she states "I am not a scholar of English or literature"(38). But Tan was only being humble about her writing, she is the type…

Incredible pressure strangles American immigrants, from the moment they step onto United States soil, throughout their struggles to make better lives for themselves, all the way to watching their first-generation children begin to understand their alienation among their stark-white peers. With verbal abuses echoing in their minds, such as,“if you’re in America, learn to speak ‘American’” and “go back to your own country if you can’t handle it here”, the understanding of American assimilation…