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Amy Tan's Essay: Being Outside In An Inside World

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Natali Petriashvili Professor Stella EN 110 12.03.15 Being Outside in an Inside World The fact that people are able to read and write is already a huge step towards success. In order to achieve something, to be good at something, literacy is important. Being able to understand gives a person some power-the power of being someone. It is certainly important to be literate, but what if a person is not? The question is not if illiteracy exists, of course it does, but it is the matter of how they are treated. Every day the number immigrants and emigrants increase in different parts of the world. And every day in the modern world, the number of articles and books increase describing the struggle of illiterates. Amy Tan tries to explain how her …show more content…

Leaving motherland and living alone is a struggle itself, but having trouble communicating with people in a new home is worse. In an international university, students apply from countries around the world. When the fall semester begins, students are to leave their home and make a new one in a new, different place. College is the first place where students find friends in their new homes; however, when a person is separated by their home, it is difficult to not be tempted to find a person who can speak the same and the different language at the same time. This temptation and desire of speaking the common language is what divides students. International students, also, develop some type of complexes or phobias of speaking English, when most of the students are fluent. This is also a reason of division in international universities. As the Minnesota Daily claims, “many international students feel a lingual and cultural disconnect in the classroom when working with domestic students” (Lemke). As a consequence of being an international student in a place where more than half of the students are fluent, a low level of illiteracy occurs and students develop complexes of speaking, therefore, a little feeling of being an outcast

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According to the U.S Department Of Education, 32 million adults in the United States can’t read (Huffington Post). Illiteracy is a growing problem around the world, and is being passed on from generation to generation. This continuous cycle is affecting the lives of children tremendously, with statistics showing that 1 in 4 children in America grow up without learning how to read (Do Something). Me Talk Pretty by David Sedaris, The Human cost of an illiterate society by Jonathan Kozol, and The Lesson by Toni Cade Bambara show the consequences of being illiterate in various ways. Illiteracy negatively affects individuals every day life in today’s society.

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