Summary and Response #1 – Amy Tan’s Mother Tongue

So basically Amy Tan’s Mother Tongue, which was published in 1990 in Berkley, California discusses how language has shaped her life and how it relates to her culture. Throughout her essay she talks about the different types of English she uses for different situations. For example, in an academic context her English is much more formal and “correct.” When she speaks to her family it’s much more casual and less formal. Amy Tan is the daughter of Chinese immigrants who eventually became a writer even though she was often told to stick with math or science. Tan’s main mission in this essay is to make the reader reflect on their own lives and think about the stereotypes they might have had on others based on the way they speak. Hopefully the essay reframes how they judge others’ literacy if they can’t relate and if they can, it helps them reframe how they judge themselves.

Another cool thing is that Tan uses multiple rhetorical strategies throughout her essay for the reader and to succeed in her ultimate purpose for writing the essay. A rhetorical strategy is basically a technique or tool in writing that writers use for their intended audience. I strongly believe that Amy Tan was successful in getting her audience to believe that “broken” English isn’t a bad thing. One way she does this is by using personal anecdotes from her life to show how she has grown from how she used to think about her own mother’s literacy and how she thinks about in the present tense. For example, in the beginning of the essay she mentions, “I know this for a fact, because when I was growing up, my mother’s ‘limited’ English limited my perception of her.” Later on, you can definitely see her growth in how she thinks about it now, or when it was written because after writing a new draft for a book she also mentions, “Apart from what any critic had to say about my writing, I knew I had succeeded where it counted when my mother finished reading my book and gave me her verdict: ‘So easy to read.’” Amy Tan realizes who she wants the audience of her books to be and using her mother as inspiration she begins to write her books in “simple” English which doesn’t mean it’s broken because there’s nothing to fix.

Another one of the rhetorical strategies that Tan uses in her essay is quoting exactly how her mother speaks. This helps the reader understand what she is referring to and provides context for the entire idea the essay is surrounding, which is the negative association with “broken” English. She explains how she never thought about her mother’s English until someone else had pointed it out to her. An example she included was, “‘Du Yusong having business like fruit stand. Like off the street kind. He is Du like Du Zong-but not Tsung-ming Island people.’” She grew up hearing her mother speak like that her entire childhood so she never realized it had sounded different to other people. 

Last but not least, another way she is successful with her purpose is by writing in the first person. Not only does this help connect to the reader on a more personal level, but it also helps the audience feel understood especially if they can identify with her story. Towards the end of her essay she makes the point that broken English isn’t a bad thing at all because it just means you are bilingual which is a beautiful thing and not something to be ashamed of. Her essay helped empower immigrants and children of immigrants to not feel pressured to speak perfect English if it isn’t their first language, which I thought was pretty interesting and well done.