Solvej Berman

Professor Kitty

English 125

January 29, 2024

Self-Identity VS. External Perceptions

My mother's mother tongue is English. My father’s mother tongue is English. My aunts,

uncles and late grandparent’s mother tongue is English. Growing up in the United States, English

quickly (or not so quickly as my mother reminds me that three years old was quite late to speak

my first words) became my mother tongue. Surrounded by English speakers, I grew up in stark

contrast to multilingual families like Tan and her family.

Tan’s mother spoke Chinese with her second language being English. She struggled to

speak “perfect” English and “[had] long realized the limitations of her English as well” (Tan 1).

Throughout her life, Tan witnessed firsthand the discrimination and prejudices her mom

constantly faced due to her inability to speak perfect English. When people heard Mrs. Tan

speak, the expected polite behavior of a sales associate or company employee dissipated almost

immediately. The lack of respect towards Mrs Tan, solely based on “imperfect English” became

painfully apparent when Tan, only a child at the time but a clear English speaker, started

handling conversations disguised as her mother and received respect and results.

Through growing up in a household that spoke a mix of English and Chinese and being

treated poorly by society, Amy Tan struggled with language identity. When she frequently saw

people disrespect her Mother as a result of her language, “[Amy] was ashamed of [Mrs. Tan’s]

English. [she] believed that her English reflected the quality of what she had to say” (Tan 2).
 After analyzing the Tan family's hardships as non-native speakers, it is hard to imagine

how I, a fluent and native English speaker, could relate. I’ll preface that I can not possibly

imagine what it is truly like to face prejudices for how you speak. However, I know how it feels

to be afraid to use your voice.

Growing up, my dad would try to read bedtime stories to me and my two older brothers;

Harry Potter, The Magic Treehouse, The Hardy Boys, etc. The key word is try. Every night we

would sit down to read our nightly chapters. Every night, my brothers would fall into a trance,

excited to know what would happen next, while I inevitably grew bored and left to complain to

my mom or search for something physically engaging. This pattern of uninterest in reading

prevailed throughout most of my childhood.

Growing up, I could tell it affected my own father's image of me. As a lawyer,

philosopher, and academic, who has spent almost all the time I have known him reading or

writing, he has trouble understanding me. As my mother tells me, he cannot comprehend that

there are different kinds of intelligence in the world, not just textbook smart. Although her

assurance of my emotional and social intelligence is kind, it certainly hasn’t promoted my desire

to write.

Summer 2023, the summer preceding senior year, and the infamously dreaded college

essays, strengthened my fear of writing. After weeks of persistent pestering, I finally gave my

dad a copy of my ninth or tenth revision of my common application essay. In less than an hour,

he returned the paper, now littered with revisions addressing word choices, sentence structures,

and most strikingly, my ideas. Everyone’s college essays are picked apart, and understandably so

when admissions are so competitive. However, when my father edited my essay, it felt personal,

like nothing I wrote was right. Sentences and ideas I was excited to include no longer made the
cut. Sitting there, reading the hundreds of suggestions highlighted in yellow, marked by red,

almost illegible cursive, I felt like Mrs. Tan, as she was judged for how she communicated. It felt

like my words were worthless and that he wanted me to sound like someone I was not.

No matter someone's background, judging someone's dialect can be hurtful. Just like

Amy Tan grew to accept and understand that her mother’s ability to speak English wasn’t a

reflection of “imperfect thoughts,” my father learned a new way to understand me. When I

returned my paper to him, having taken few to none of his suggestions, he was confused and

likely disappointed. I explained to him that it felt dishonest to drastically change the essay at the

suggestion of someone who didn’t embrace that my writing was a reflection of myself. As

Roozen claims, “the act of writing, then, is not so much about using a particular set of skills as it

is about becoming a particular kind of person” (Naming What We Know, 51). When he took the

time to look at my essay with the perspective that the experiences and ideas I included had

contributed to making me the person I am today, he was no longer as critical. He learned to

appreciate my writing for how it represented me and less so for what he expected from his

constitutional law grad students' essays or anyone other than me.

When the November first early application deadline rolled around, I compiled my essays

and prepared myself to submit the papers. My stomach turned and my palms began to sweat. I

couldn’t shake the feeling that I should have given in to my dad's help. I’d be a fool to think that

my writing could be more appealing to the average scholar and by passing up on it, I felt I could

be losing admission to my dream school. I had always dreamt of going to Michigan, continuing

the family legacy. I never wanted to envision myself elsewhere but as I toured schools I tried to

be open to different futures. The Michigan dream never waned, but new, different possibilities

helped subdue the unsettling and all-consuming fear of being rejected. When it was time to
submit my application, I kept this valor. Just as Amy Tan marked her success in writing through

her mother's ability to read and understand it— rather than what critics expected or what the

caliber of her er g usually critics or language usually found in books of higher caliber had to

say— I decided to adjust my own meaning of success. Rather than committing to a school that

wanted me for the voice of my father– carefully crafted and “perfected” over years of life,

education, and teaching– my new success would be in finding a school that wanted me for me. It

just so happened that this newfound marketer of success coincided with my dream. Go blue!

Work Cited
Naming What We Know: Threshold Concepts of Writing Studies on JSTOR,

www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt15nmjt7. Accessed 18 Feb. 2024.

Tan, Amy. Mother Tongue, by Amy Tan, www.umsl.edu/~alexanderjm/Mother Tongue by

Tan.pdf. Accessed 18 Feb. 2024.