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Identity In Mother Tongue By Amy Tan

1360 Words6 Pages

There are many different and unique aspects that form a person’s identity like social class, gender, religious beliefs, and occupation. Two crucial parts of one’s identity are language and race. The race is following your nationality’s cultures and how you represent them. Language is what we use to communicate on a daily basis. These two have a strong relationship because for most cultures language is an integral part. One person that reminds me of both is my great grandmother who has recently passed away. Her house would always smell like rice and beans and at the pace, she would talk to my great grandfather is too fast for me to even follow. I know that she came from Cuba and loved to show her culture, but others may not recognize her as …show more content…

Tan says that the language spoken in one’s household greatly impacts how well and where they will do well, especially Asian-Americans. Tan states “And this makes me think that there are other Asian-American students whose English spoken in the home might also be described as "broken" or "limited." And perhaps they also have teachers who are steering them away from writing and into math and science, which is what happened to me.” The explanation Tan is giving us is that people who do not understand you will influence you to go away, creating a stereotype in the process. Looking at her explain how language and identity are connected made me look back on my …show more content…

“How to Tame a Wild Tongue” by Gloria Anzaldua is about her life as a Chicano living in America. To speak Chicano Spanish was frowned upon by many and she is frustrated by this, especially coming from the southwest where that language is common. She talks about times in her life which made her want to start the revival of her “dead” culture. Having your own dialect be ridiculed and rejected by others made her want to fight and show how rich her culture is. Gloria states “I am my language”. She wants to feel no pressure or fear when talking in her language to the world, to embrace it. Seeing how all of her explanations in her essay show a strong relationship between language and identity. The way we interact with one another is through language. When you hear someone talking you can get a good grasp as to who they are by paying attention to a few things like how fast they speak, the annunciation of certain words, the rise and fall of their pitch, and the tone throughout the conversation. After hearing the person talk you have a strong feeling of who they are because of what you heard, the language you heard. Anytime I am around family our conversations become fluid and rehearsed. Every story that my Abuelo tells has main ideas that I can point out because I understand how he talks. Being able to tell what type of person you are talking to shows the strong

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In her essay "Mother Tongue," Amy Tan writes about the impact of her mother's limited English on her own writing and sense of self. She describes how envisioning her mother as a reader of her work encouraged her to write more authentically, because it forced her to consider the perspective of someone who was not a native English speaker. Tan writes that she began to see the value in using "simple, direct" language that would be accessible to her mother, rather than trying to impress readers and critics with flowery or complex prose. Tan appreciates the beauty of her mother's broken English and tries to preserve the unique qualities of her mom's speech like “her intent, her passion, her imagery, the rhythms of her speech and the nature of her

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She thinks that the language spoken at home plays a role in shaping the language of a child. Tan notices very stereotypical things that are expected from people who come from immigrant families with limited English. For example, Tan notices that Asian students do noticeably better on math tests than English. She also notices that there aren't many Asian American students who take creative writing classes but, preferably take math and science classes. Tan wonders that if its because teachers steer them away from

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