SE 1321 Kalpana Iyengar By Adrian Garza Ovalle Mother Tongue by Amy Tan

Summary Mother Tongue written by Amy Tan is an essay where Amy narrates a story of how she as a little girl always had to help her mother to explain herself to other people because of her “broken english”. The essay starts with Amy giving a speech to a crowd with her mother present and she realizes she had never spoken that way in front of her mother, she tend to use a different english in front of her mother. As the narration goes on Amy gives some examples of occasions she had to help her mother or even talk by through the phone as if she was her in order for other people to take her seriously and give her a good service. Amy’s mother did not only limit her

own possibilities in life but limited Amy’s possibilities as well given. Chinese students or Asian americans tend to go into engineering and teachers might tend to steer those students away from writing but the rebellious attitude of Amy made her become an English major and prove people wrong. Apart from what critics had to say about her writings she knew shw had succeeded when her mother said her book was “easy to read”.

Reflection What this essay made me think about was how your language limits your thoughts and how you want to express yourself. Given this issue it will also affect how people think about you, how people understand you and even how people might treat you. In the story there are several quotes like “ because she expressed them imperfectly her thoughts where imperfect” and “ people in department stores, banks and restaurants did not take her seriously, did not give her good service[…]”. These quotes gave meaning to this essay for me, I started thinking about my personal problems and what I feel when I struggle to express the way I really want to express.

Language is a very important tool people have, you can send a clear message to other people by the way you talk, the way you say things and when you have a “broken language” you are not able to send your messages the correct way, even when you have them very clear on your head you cannot. So after my first year living in the US and the essay “Mother Tongue” I am completely sure language can limit your thoughts but it can also amplify them if it is not “broken”.

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