Amy Tan Mother Tongue Essay

According to Census Bureau reports, 63 percent of immigrants who arrived prior to 1980 had high English-speaking ability in 2012, while only 6 percent did not speak English at all. In relation to its publication date, in the essay, Mother Tongue by Amy Tan, the author represents immigrants as having “limited” or “broken” English by using her mother, a chinese immigrant, as an example to symbolize the limitations of immigrants in America and the challenges they have to face in order to be accepted. The representation of immigrants having “limited” or “broken” English can be identified within the text as the author uses her mother as an example to represent these said immigrants. In the first two sections of the essay, the author describes a

To support the mentioning of the author’s feelings about her mother as she was growing up, she provides empirical evidence in the following paragraphs in the text. The author states, “... the fact that people in department stores, at banks, and at restaurants did not take her seriously, did not give her good service, pretended to not understand her, or even acted as they did not hear her,” to emphasize the personal challenges her mother had to endure as an immigrant and to explain why she felt that exact way about her mother’s English. This emphasis can also be put into context when referring to the challenges that have been forced upon other immigrants. This part of the text can be considered relatable if the reader has immigrant parents or just unexpectedly informational. With that being said, the author’s personal experiences with her mother’s “limited” or “broken” English, as she refers to it, creates awareness not only for those who read the essay and can relate but to also those who perform these actions towards immigrants. Although the author’s mother’s English is considered “limited” and is symbolic in the sense of highlighting the challenges immigrants have to face, Tan’s mother’s English can be symbolic in other tenses as