I feel that Amy Tan's Mother Tongue, was uplifting because of the way she talked about how she overcame the judgement about her nationality. I was also confused in the middle of the reading because of the examples she gave of her mother's speech. I find it very moving that Tan embraces her nationality and uses both Englishes on an everyday bases. I also feel she explains language in a beautiful way, you can tell she has a real passion for English. I understand the point she was trying to make in the narrative, which was that even though she comes from a Chinese background and many Americans think she would not do strongly in the English department, she did succeed and proved many people wrong.
In the beginning of Amy Tan's narrative, Mother Tongue, she states "I am someone who has always loved language. I am fascinated by language in daily life. I spend a great deal of my time time thinking about the power of language - the way it can evoke an emotion, a visual image, a complex idea, or a simple truth." (63) In these few sentences you understand the passion she has for the English language and what it can do. She goes on to give examples of her mother's 'broken English' as she calls it, "He come to my wedding. I didn't see, I heard it. I gone to boy's side, they have YMCA dinner. Chinese age I was nineteen." (Tan 64) This confused me as I was reading because I did not understand the text. She also gives other examples of moments in her life, that are of her mother's broken language, that helped me understand the point she was trying to project in the narrative.
Amy Tan's "Mother Tongue" is multi-dimensional -- from the relationship of daughter-mother, and her changes in perception and understanding of her mother, and her mother's relationship with the world, as she matured; to issues of "culturism" and discrimination; to -- yes -- love of language, and the extremely focused and fine examinations of it in which writers engage during the process of writing.
ReplyDeleteIt is also gently, tenderly humorous, and loving: it isn't solely about language: it's about her relationship with her mother.
And, ultimately (yes), it is a celebration of language itself.
I return to it from time to time to appreciate how very rich, how very complex, how multi-faceted, it is. And, as I recall, at about the same time as the writing of this essay, in an interview, Tan brought the conclusion one step forward: that her mother's English wasn't "broken"; it was "stripped to the essentials". And I think that latter is exactly right, and the words she was ultimately looking for, but fell just short of, in writing the essay.
So she wasn't making a single point -- she is much too generous a writer to be able to be so limited.