“Mother Tongue” Summary & Response

             Amy Tan was born in the United States and her parents were immigrant parents from China.  The story tells that she failed her mother's expectations that she become a doctor or concert pianist. She is a writer that is fascinated by English language of her daily life.  Amy can understood her mother but she had a very heavy Chinese accent that others could not understand her clearly. Amy reveals that she was embarrassed by her mother's use of broken English from time to time. When she finally got to college, she decided to be a English major instead other typical Asian students who usually are enrolled as engineering or other math-related majors. She discussed about the Chinese culture how most of them succeed in math since there is only one answer to most of everything but not in English since things are harder to understand and writing can be done in a lot of ways. In 1985, she finally began to write fiction and other various books. She wrote using what she thought to be crafted sentences and sentences that would finally prove that she had mastery over the English language.

            My development as a literate is linked with my cultural identity just as Amy Tan's. Similar to her I was born in America with immigrant parents from Taiwan. In Taiwan, we learn Chinese in school yet our own parents speak another native language known as Taiwanese at home. I grew up in Taiwan until I was in the 4th grade so I'm capable of understand both Chinese and Taiwanese.  When I arrived in America, I was an ESL (English Second Language) student in the 4th grade and I had some struggles as a reader and writer at first but I quickly learned the English by the next school year  Both Amy Tan and my parents have high expectations of me eventually becoming doctors or lawyers, but I ultimately ended up choosing to become a business major in college. Like her and my parents, they cannot speak very well English and sometimes it is hard for them to communicate with other people out there so I have to help them along the way. At home, I speak Chinese or Taiwanese to them most of the time as they are still not fluent in English at all. Being a trilingual Asian-American student, I can totally relate Amy Tan's story and her identity in the Chinese culture.