Mother Tongue

“Based on a literal reading of “Mother Tongue”, I believe that Tan’s purpose of the writing is to show how language has influenced her experiences throughout her life. Language has had a influence not only on Tans personal life but also her professional life as a writer. Throughout the writing, Tan uses multiple examples of how her different ”Englishes” have effected not only her life but also her mothers.”

“As mentioned in the previous section, Tan has had language influence her experiences throughout her life both professionally and personally. In the first few opening paragraphs of the text, Tan states that she, ”spends a great deal of time thinking about the power of language” and ”language is the tool of her trade”. Tan also goes into great extent to mention her mother throughout the piece to reflect on her personal experiences with language. For example, Tan mention’s an incident where she was walking down the street with her mother and found herself once again thinking of the English that she was using with her and how it relates to a type of ”intimacy” of her family talk which she grew up with. Tan also makes ties to culture and mentions the lack of Asian-Americans in creative literature and how she had been steered to subjects like math and science growing up. She questions if other Asian-American students might have grown up in the similar household where their parents language had been described as ”broken”. “