Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Hannah Edwards
Stephanie Maenhardt
English 1050
July 4, 2017
separate things, in very different classes. But, they are the same thing. When you
google othering, the exact definition is, View or treat (a person or group of people) as
intrinsically different from and alien to oneself. It makes sense that othering would be
undesirable. Googles definition of stereotype is, A widely held but fixed and
people are viewed or treated different or alienated, it is because the viewer, or the
judger, is viewing them as stereotypical. This is not right. It has got to change. There are
One situation I found interesting was the one with Ellis Island and Angel Island.
Both of these islands are immigration centers. Angel Island was typically set aside for
the Chinese immigrants. Since the Chinese were the minority, they were treated like
garbage. The Chinese would come to America and they offered to work for cheaper
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than the typical American. The Americans got upset and they started imprisoning
Chinese immigrants until they could prove to have a blood related family to be able to
stay in America. To prove this, they were interrogated up to the smallest details about
their relatives. Some wished they stayed in their home country and didn't come to
America at all. Ellis Island is a little different in a way. It was chosen for immigrants
because no one would let the immigration settle anywhere else, and no one wanted to
be on the island. Most of the early immigrants were sent there and more than half of
them were let into the United States. At Ellis Island, they would check for different
illnesses, and if they found someone with an illness they would chalk them with a letter,
making it easily known to everyone around them what they had, or suspected of having.
The letters were labeled as so, E-eye trouble, K-hernia, L-lameness, X-mental defect,
H-heart disease. If they werent treated as the minority, there wouldnt have been so
much suffering.
In the story about Lu it states that she viewed language as a tool for survival. I
feel as though one reason she felt it was a tool to survival is because her parents told
her it was the only way she could be successful. Apparently, her fathers father couldnt
be a success because he knew little to no English. I believe the real reason he was
unsuccessful was because he was treated as an alian. Her father was successful
because he was very good at speaking English. Because he decided to blend in with
the majority then he became successful? Although it isnt wrong to learn English, he
shouldnt have had to learn it just to be successful. With hearing about her
grandparents, Lu probably felt as though those were her only two options in life, learn
English and be a success, or dont and fail at life. As she learned English and still spoke
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a whole new language at home, she started mixing them up. Those around her would
look at her as though she was an alien. Soon she was too afraid to speak another
language in front of those who were unable to understand her. Because she would over
think and didnt want to be alienated she got very self-conscious and started having
voices in her head. By having voices in my mind I imagined she really did have voices
in her mind. As she would try to talk to her classmates at school she probably second
guessed herself with every word, and would be fighting herself in her head over ever
little conversation. For school, she read the book The Revolutionary Family. As she
read the book, she was moved by the heroines internal conflict and wrote about this.
She soon realized that was unacceptable to be writing about a war heroine in a way that
would make her sound week and this would be unacceptable for a school paper. Her
mother and sister were moved with many of the different books but, Lu felt to
embarrassed to tell them that she was moved with a school book. She could just hear
the different things her family or those at school would say so, she hid the paper in her
drawer never to be seen by her family or those at school. So, as you can see,
sometimes we alienate ourselves. We second guess ourselves, put ourselves down and
we can be the ones that make us feel like the minority. Although she was more of a
minority than most of her classmates, with the voices in her head all day every day, it
did enhance the feeling of isolation and differentness. Even after all these experiences,
she can still say I am grateful for the overwhelming complexity of the circumstances in
which I grew up. For it is this complexity that kept me from losing sight of the effort and
How to Tame a Wild Tongue I first found it a little confusing how the writer
would go from Spanish to English to the other languages she had a little confusing. It
was a little annoying because I had no clue what she was saying. I didnt understand
why the writer would write in another language when they know their audience is
English. I thought to myself, that is what society does to people. They put into your mind
that everyone must be the same, speak the same language, have a certain style. But as
I read on I found the reason. I didnt even realize she is trying to put us in her shoes.
The only thing I could think of was how much of an alien she is and how different she is.
All she is trying to do is make the reader realize how difficult it was to live in a world
where you had different languages mixed up. How difficult it was for people to
understand her. Pretty much how it feels to be alienated. After I looked past all the
stereotypes, I found it very interesting that she would use different languages to tell her
story. I believe most readers would appreciate reading such an interesting story. I was
reading through the story then all the sudden it was a different language. At first, I just
skipped over the Spanish words. I could tell the story was missing quite a bit when I
would skip over the words. So, I started trying to read the Spanish words and the story
seemed much more complete. Even though I only understood some of them with only
taking one semesters worth of Spanish in high school. After reading How to Tame a
Wild Tongue it made me wonder how difficult it would have been living in a borderland.
When half the people spoke one language and the other spoke a different language, it
would have been very hard. I imagine that although quite a few people of the borderland
probably spoke a mix of English and Spanish, I dont think their mixes where quite the
same. And this would make it quite difficult to communicate with the different people of
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the land. I felt like her language was robbed from her when she would talk to Chicano
Spanish, standard English, north Mexican Spanish, or Pachuco. This made her feel as
though she couldnt really talk to them because she was different. She didnt quite
speak the language perfectly or she would accidentally mix the different languages.
Out of all of the different stories I have read throughout this semester my favorite
by far is Tans essay Mother Tongue. Although all of the stories I read have been
interesting, there is something about this one that just gets me. The main thing I like
about it is its a daughter talking about her mom and you can almost feel the love she
Tan says that experts believe that a persons developing language skills are
more influenced by peers; yet she thinks that family is more influential, especially in
immigrant families. I agree with both. I think while developing a language some people
are more influenced by peers and others by family. This depends on what type of
association they have with each one. With me, I believe I was more influenced by my
family because of how close I was and how much I grew to love them. With another
person, it might be peers because they cant stand their family and would do anything to
get away from them. Tan goes on to say that even those who their first language is
English, they too speak different Englishs. I agree that everyone speaks different
home talking with my husband I can just let loose and be me. I feel as though I can say
whatever I want. And I do. But at work its different. I feel like I must smile all the time
and use full sentences to sound more professional in the work place. I do agree with
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Tan when she talks about how she doesnt like the term Broken English. As sad as it
sounds, I cant think of a better term though. That phrase makes it sound like they are
unintelligent and dont understand anything. It might make people think they are not as
I loved reading each of these papers. I found them very interesting and they have
actually taught me a lot. Usually when I would go to the store and I could tell the
cashiers first language wasnt English, I would think less of them. Its not their fault their
first language isnt English. Also, now that I think about it, who really is smarter or more
intelligent. The person who has grown up speaking English or the one who grew up
speaking something entirely different and learned English and can understand it very
well. I dont think anyone would disagree with me when I say the one who worked hard
Works Cited
Anzalduo, Gloria. How to Tame a Wild Tongue. Reading Culture. George, Diana
and thing and Trimbur, John. 8th ed. Boston: Pearson, 2012. (521-528). Print.
Gordon, Mary. More Than Just a Shrine: Paying Homage to the Ghosts of Ellis Island.
and thin Reading Culture. George, Diana and Trinbur, John. 8th ed. Boston: Pearson,
Lu, Min-Zhan. From Silence to Words: Writing as a Struggle. Reading Culture. and
thin George, Diana and Trinbur, John. 8th ed. Boston: Pearson, 2012. (147-156).
thin Print.
http://www.sjsu.edu/people/julie.sparks/courses/Engl-117B-spr2016/Mother-
Tongue-by-Amy-Tan.pdf Website.