In her story "Mother Tongue," Amy Tan describes her relationship with her mother, who speaks "broken"

English. Essentially, Amy ending up changing her style of writing because of her mother, who changed
Amy's perception of language. In the beginning of her life, Amy was always ashamed and embarrassed
because of her mother; her mother, in speaking broken English, would often sound weird and not be
understood by people in every day affairs. As an attempt to get away from this side of her heritage, Amy--
once she becomes a writer--writes with great English and diction, and she uses a plethora of vocabulary.
However, she soon realizes that she is being someone she is not; Amy eventually fully realizes her true
relationship with her mother, and subsequently allows that newfound knowledge to affect her writing.
Their relationship is one of wonderful love and comfort, one where they can speak broken English
("mother tongue") and have it mean something very special. Essentially, Amy Tan becomes authentic and
true to her roots; inspired by her mother, she begins to right so that the 'common man' can understand her

2: The summary of this short novel can sound like that: Amy Tan is a daughter of a Chinese emigrant,
whose dream was coming to America, to escape the poverty and provide a better life for her daughter.
The daughter, Amy Tan, becomes a writer, and now she’s describing her relation with her roots and
heritage, through the language she’s speaking now, which is English. As a writer, the language is the
creative tool. So, the way she’s using the language is fundamental. She’s sharing with us her story, how
she gets to use the language in the way she is, and how her mother’s did imperfect English affected her.
The story is very meaningful and very universal, in my opinion. Because is not just about the language
itself, but also about relationship with parents, with the cultural background and heritage. It is about
leaving your home country and living abroad, and how to still keep the roots. It is about changing, but
keeping, at the same time. It is about struggling and confrontation with a hostile (sometimes)
environment. It is also about the generation gap, about being ashamed, at some point, of your parents,
because they aren’t good enough for your status or image. And all those meanings might apply for so
many of us. You don’t necessarily have to leave your country to experiment those feelings! It’s enough
just to grow professionally and change the way of life! Suddenly, your parent’s house seems small and
ugly, they don’t seem as smart as you thought they were supposed to be, they can get less and less of what
you are saying, even if you are speaking the same mother language as they always did.
This story is about losing and getting back, in the end. It is about coming home, in a way, after a long
absence, and being proud again of what you are and what your heritage is.
At first, when she was a child, Amy Tan was ashamed that her friends couldn’t understand what her
mother was saying. She felt bad also because they said her English is “broken”, “as if it were damaged
and needed to be fixed”. She tended to believe at that time, as everybody else around, that “her English
reflected the quality of what she had to say”. Because, to express something in a wrong or imperfect way,
you must be wrong (imperfect and limited) in your thoughts!
Her mother also teaches her to think in a different manner than the other children in school. This was the
reason why she couldn’t react the same way to achievement tests! She grew up with the strong believe
(suggested also by the teachers) that Asian students would be much better into engineering, accounting or
anything else than an English – based profession.
Only later, she discovers the richness inside that different system of thinking. Fortunately, because she
“happens to be rebellious in nature and enjoy the challenge of disproving assumptions”, she starts not
only to focus her study into English, but also began to write. And that was the moment she realized how
important and meaningful was the fact she was actually able to use different kinds of English language,
and start to appreciate her mother heritage for its real potential.
This is the reason she starts writing about her mother: “I wanted to capture what language ability tests can
never reveal: her intent, her passion, her imagery, the rhythms of her speech, and the nature of her
thoughts”. And she became so much aware about that richness her mother actually gave her, that she
decided her first reader and critic should be the mother itself. As she is mentioning in the end of the story:
“I knew I had succeeded where it counted when my mother finished reading my book and gave me her
verdict: so easy to read.”
I believe that each of us was Amy Tan, in some point his life. We do carry a hidden treasure inside of us,
and sometimes we need to be far away from home, or to be separated from our roots somehow, in order to
realize and appreciate what we really have.

3: Mother Tongue- -Amy Tan

One rhetorical device Tan used was asyndeton. An example of that on page 403, “…grammatical phrases,
burdened, it suddenly seemed to me, with nominalized forms, past perfect tenses, conditional phrases, all
the forms of standard English that I learned in school and through books, the forms of English I did not
use at home with my mother.” Another example, “…her intent, her passion, her imagery, the rhythms of
her speech, and the nature of her thoughts.” There were many words in the sentence with frequent comma
usage and no intervening conjunctions. In the author’s essay, many parts consisted of repeating the same
word(s) in the beginning of sentences or clauses, which is the definition of anaphora. “I am not a scholar
of English or literature. I cannot give you much more than personal opinions…I am a writer…I am
someone who has always loved language. I am fascinated by language in daily life…” (Pg.402) Tan
frequently used anaphora throughout and many times, “I”, the first person point of view was used. Her
sentence fluency varied, with many short and choppy sentences and numerous long and fluent ones.

I could relate to “Mother Tongue,” because depending on the situation, the author used different types of
“Englishes”. Tan spoke “broken” English with her mother, and a more sophisticated one with other
people. I also sometimes speak “broken” English with some of my family (more with my grandmother
and infamous uncle). Like the author, I don’t like the term “broken,” because I don’t see it as something
needed to be fixed. I actually prefer the term, “Spanish,” because of the way I usually mix English with
some Spanish words so they can understand my thoughts to a better extent, but that is just me.

Tan did an excellent job of describing society’s perception of people with accents, because I also notice it
when I’m with some of my family. “…the hospital did not apologize when they said they had lost the
CAT scan… She said they would not give her any more information until next time… So she said she
would not leave until the doctor called her daughter…And when the doctor finally called her daughter,
me, who spoke in perfect English-lo and behold-we had assurances the CAT scan would be found…”
Tan’s tone seemed to be on the sarcastic side while describing her mother being discriminated for not
speaking properly. She gave me a superb example of how most Americans infer that information from
people who don’t speak English fluently is of less quality than people who do.

Overall, Tan excelled in using rhetorical devices. There was a good variety of sentence fluency, there was
logical tone, and superior word choice was present. I like the fact that she noticed how people who speak
“proper” English may look down on people who don’t. Her essay was witty, realistic, and had many
interesting points which I agreed with, even before I read it.