In Mother Tongue author Amy Tan expresses her views on both English for Asian-American stereotypes and their culture based on their degree and language “classes” during their school years. As the author of the story, Amy feels that teachers force Asian-American students to take math and science classes, distracting students from their English classes, so their vocabulary and grammar become “broken” or “limited” (Tan). Tan says that whenever she and her mother went to a store or restaurant, they were not treated the same as those who spoke English well. Language created a barrier between Tan and her mother, but as the writer grew older, she eventually accepted this “broken” English because it felt like home (Tan). She no longer saw the imperfection of her mother’s language, but she felt comfortable because it had become part of her family (Tan). Tan was shocked to find that there are very few Asian-American students in creative writing, and even fewer in American literature (Tan). This suggests that students do significantly better on math tests than they do on language tests. On the other hand, it led the writer to discover that so many Asian Americans prefer engineering and technical majors, ignoring psychology or philosophy, for example (Tan). The main idea of Tan’s story is to emphasize that the fact that someone cannot speak English to perfection in no way makes them less intelligent than someone who was born in this country and understands and speaks English fluently. In her essay, Tan wanted to send a compelling message about how we should view people on their beautiful side rather than their flaws.
Work Cited
Tan, Amy. Mother Tongue. University of Missouri-St. Louis, n. d.