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Maxine Hong Kingston's Essay 'The Language Of Silence'

1189 Words5 Pages

Language is first learned as an infant by absorbing and mimicking one's environment, surroundings, and daily life. For some, like myself, more than one language is spoken, and learning how to balance multiple languages can be a challenge. Trying to integrate language with culture and environment at times can be interesting and other times demanding and tiresome. Maxine Hong Kingston describes her struggles in coping with the differences in her languages, coming to terms with herself, and accepting how her culture uses language in her essay, “The Language of Silence”. Although similar struggles are had by Christine Marin, she writes in her essay “Spanish Lessons”, about how she discovered her culture through language, how it empowered her, and how she learned to love that part of herself. Just like Kingston and Marin, language has shaped the person that I have become and how I view it. To discover the true power of language one must experience its advantages as well as its disadvantages.
Kingston, a Chinese-American professor and writer, equipped herself with “The Language of Silence” as a child. She expressed how she was quiet for most of her childhood; at first, it was something good, it was an advantage, a way to observe. She was not aware she needed to speak. She just knew that …show more content…

I have grown to be proud that I can speak Vietnamese, even if just a little. Being able to speak another language helps connect me to my ancestors and family. My favorite language connection is the language of food. Knowing even a few words or phrases in Vietnamese I am able to connect with native speakers and learn about new ingredients and cooking styles I would otherwise never have discovered without the power of

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