





According to her story, “Mother Tongue”, Amy Tan was born in a Chinese immigrant family in America, she shares the experiences in terms of struggling with her mother’s English and standard English. Finally, she has new perspectives to look at her mother’s “broken English”. She admits that her mother’s English is not standard but “it reveals her passion, her imagery, the rhythms of her speech and the nature of her thoughts” (346). Actually, it is not just in language that immigrant children like Tan face difference and division, they do face a double cultural life as well.  Cultural assimilation is a constant topic of conversation about immigrant children. In Amy Tan’s “Mother Tongue”, the nuances and difficulties of cultural assimilation are depicted not only through linguistic and cultural barriers, but are grounded in the unique negotiation by Chinese children of their household’s culture and language and the general American economy of values and customs. This negotiation of values and culture results in something like a split identity, and often results in an ability to code-switch and adapt to the various demands of different social settings. The consequences, of course, are not always benign; as we see in Tan’s case, it was especially difficult for her to rationalize her family’s seeming disadvantage (culturally and linguistically) with the actual conditions of her reality in California. 

First of all, there is no denying that the immigrant children have to adapt to American society since they will live there for a lifetime. As the result, it is necessary for them to assimilate into American culture. Yet, the immigrant children have challenges on getting into American mainstream society. And the language is an obvious and significant part of those challenges. Most of the immigrant children become sensitive about their usage of language while adapting to American culture, which is different from their family. In Tan’s case, the crucial time when she is growing and developing as a person, and this causes her to be sensitive about her usage of English. She doesn’t want to speak like her mother at all. She doubts her mother sometimes. Tan laments in her story over “the fact that people in department stores, at banks, and at restaurants did not take her seriously, did not give her good service, pretended not to understand her, even acted as if they did not hear her” (344). This basically reflects the social environment at that time. Considering the Chinese immigrant history in America, William Wei discusses in the “The Chinese-American Experience: An Introduction,” "Since the 1960s, Chinese have immigrated to the United States in significant numbers, taking particular advantage of the immigration policy’s emphasis on family reunification” (lines 51-53). Based on this historical background in the mid-20th century when Tan was born, there was a large community of Chinese immigrants in San Francisco. Still, it was just the beginning of the Chinese community’s development in America. For most of the local American people, it did not make sense that people live in America but speak broken English around 20th century. There is a cultural and linguistic barrier that only let immigrant children like Tan assimilate if they acquired the necessary skills and behaviors. As a result, perfecting English skills is especially important for immigrant children, because if the immigrant cannot speak the English language, then people will treat her with racist aggression. She will be ignored and refused proper service, as Tan says. It  also happened on her mother. 

In that circumstance, the immigrant children’s self-identify becomes unique. It comes from American mainstream society, while her mother’s English does not work well for that mainstream society. Like Tan writes in the article, “I think my mother’s English almost had an effect on limiting my possibilities in life as well” (345). Hence, it is reasonable that Tan had a tough time dealing with the relationship with her mother in terms of language. Actually, it happened in Chinese immigrant families often. Wei also reveals, “in the 19th century, many people considered the Chinese to be unassimilable and therefore unacceptable- hence, their eventual exclusion from America in 1882.” (lines 5-6). This situation maintained for a very long period. In that social situation, it was challenging for Chinese-American adolescents to either adapt to American mainstream society or accept their family’s ideas. So we can see, Tan’s special social situation affected Tan’s thoughts a lot. Because of her particular experience of language and culture during her youth, Tan has a comprehensive understanding of both her mother’s usage of English and the standard English. Consequently, the immigrant children have special self-identity, which is shaped by both the society and their family during their growth. This particular self-identity lets them be satisfied with American society while they also maintaining the original country culture more or less.   

Moreover, the immigrant children build their own unique culture identity during their growth. On the one hand, most of the immigrant children accept the American mainstream culture. They have the American education. The immigrant children are affected by their peers and schools. On the other hand, the family also affected their thoughts; some typically traditional Chinese culture also can be transferred from their families to them. Connecting it with Tan’s story, she mentions in the “Mother Tongue," “My true abilities lay in math and science, because in those areas I achieved A’s and scored in the ninetieth percentile or higher” (345). It is true that Chinese parents value education and encourage their children to do well in math and science. And this cultural belief is given to Tan from her family. She believes she should be good at studying. 

Tan’s Chinese family values education, so this cultural sense affects her very much. It explains why Tan had had an intense expectation to get a perfect grade in English, no matter how good she did in math and science. In the C.N.Le’s “Asian Americans and Education,” the author C.N. Le reveals some facts about the changing status of Asian American education in recent years. In summary, C.N. Le recognizes that Asian Americans traditionally, maybe stereotypically, prioritize and value education. The Asian American community has a high rate of high education completion, which contributes to the idea of the Asian American as the “model minority,” as Le puts it. Also, Le reports in the article, “It's also common for Asian American students to have the highest test scores and/or GPAs within any given high school or college cohort” (lines 27-28). Connecting this fact with Tan’s college experience, she says, “And she says perhaps they also have teachers who are steering them away from writing and into math and science, which is what happened to me” (346). The perspectives of others – teachers, students, and general cultural stereotypes –  led Tan to think about these conditions of her ethnicity in relation to her “self”.  Such as, “why do so much Chinese go into engineering” (346)?  “Why are few Asian Americans enrolled in creative writing programs?” So what about herself? It is true for most Asians that they are good at conducting science- or math-related inquiry? People have had, for a long time, this assumption about Asian students. Admittedly, the immigrant children's self-identify and their selectivity of culture assimilation are not only affected by their family's beliefs but also the social assumptions.

In Tan’s case, she shares her growth experience in terms of usage of English. It is also involved with life experiences as an immigrant child. As we all know, communications are important and everywhere in daily life, language is a necessary and significant part of the daily communications. But not only that, a lot of culture senses are conveyed by its language. For most of immigrant children in America, they have had the difficult time to figure out how American culture works and how their family culture works. The immigrant children start to adapt to American mainstream society by working on standard English. Meanwhile, they also accept the traditional culture and sociocultural senses of their original country from their parents. So we can see, the culture assimilation of the immigrant children is affected by many things, such as family’s educations, society’s assumptions, etc. Most immigrant children have gone through the dilemmatic place due to their growth experience in the double culture. But finally, they find their own way to assimilate both current country’s culture and original country’s culture. 





