
“Mother Tongue” was written by Amy Tan and was published in 1989. Amy was born in the United States in 1952, a couple months after her parents immigrated from China. When Amy Tan was younger, she dreamed of becoming an artist while her mother and father wanted her to be a doctor and concert pianist. Mother Tongue is about Tan’s mother and how she was not respected as a Chinese-American. Tan talks about how her mother had “broken English” and while she was growing up people told Tan to take more of the math and science route because she was raised in a home where she constantly listened to “broken English”. When in reality, Tan spoke close to perfect English, and would always speak to adults for her mother so her mother would not be looked down upon. I have researched the history of Chinese-Americans and this research has given me a better understanding of the text and why she wrote it the way she did. Through my research I learned about when and why Chinese-Americans came to America, what events happened leading up to Tan’s writing of “Mother Tongue”, why Tan wrote this the way she did, and how the general population responded to her text. 

Chinese Americans are said to be the oldest and largest ethnic group of Asian ancestry in the United States. Chinese immigrants left mainly because of economic and political problems in China. Some Chinese-Americans started showing up in San Francisco in 1838 where they tried to find work. When they weren’t finding what they were looking for, they then left for California for the same reason that Americans were, the 1849 Gold rush. Majority of Chinese-Americans during that time were peasant. It did not take long for the Chinese-Americans to figure out that they were being discriminated against. Some called them the “yellow peril”. This was the name given to Asian immigrants because of the color of their skin. The media had a large part to do with discrimination and why Americans shunned them so easily. Images in the media showed that they spoke a different language, what religion they were, what food they ate, what clothes they dressed in, and many other things that seem foreign to the eyes of Americans. Americans did not see eye-to-eye with what the Chinese-Americans lifestyle was. Instead of learning more about their culture, they took the easy route and just decided to reject them. Therefore they were not given a fair shot at anything, especially jobs. They lived in communities where they did everything together. It was like their own little world. The first jobs that they had when they got here were to help the growth of the American industries. “They worked in wood mills, and cigar, shoe, and garment industries; twenty-five occupations in all” (The History of Chinese Immigration to the U.S.). These were jobs that Americans did not want, so they gave them to the immigrants. This justifies that Chinese-Americans were not accepted of when they came to the United States. 

However, as the 1970’s rolled around, economic opportunities for the Chinese-Americans were improving. According to Asian-Nation.org, “from 1977 to 1987, the U.S. Census reported that the number of Chinese-owned firms grew by 286 percent.” With this statistic it can be inferred that the Chinese-Americans were starting to make themselves feel more a part of the American culture and society. Although this was not the case for every Chinese-American, and did not occur until the 1970’s. This kind of supportive community was not established when Tan’s mother first came to America. While she tells us the story of her mother, she constantly states how her mother had “broken English” and how people were not understanding of this issue. In the text Tan tells us that the “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, or even acted as if they did not hear her” because of her English. These issues could be because there were not many Chinese-Americans in America at the time. People have overlooked the struggles of Chinese-Americans when they first got to America by focusing on the breakthrough of a small group in the 1970’s. 

While reading Tan’s “Mother Tongue”, it seemed as if she were writing in her diary. Tan uses her personal stories to give background and understanding to her readers of why she writes the way she does and what her purpose is behind her unique writing style. At the end of “Mother Tongue” she explains why she writes the way she does. It is all because of her mother and her mother’s “broken English”. She “began to write stories using all the English’s [she] grew up with…” (Mother Tongue), so that she could reach a wider audience and meet all kinds of reading levels. Her main goal was to write a book that her mother could read with ease, and her biggest accomplishment was when her mother finished a book and told her that it was, “so easy to read.” Tan’s reasoning for writing her books and stories the way she does is because she wants to reach a wide variety of people.

I have read multiple reviews of Mother Tongue by multiple people and they were all similar in the sense that each of them talked about how they really enjoyed the text. They both talked about how her writings appeal to a wide variety of people. The first review I looked at, “Thoughts on ‘Mother Tongue’ by Amy Tan”, she talked about how Tan’s “mother’s life experiences were limited due to the language barrier.” This directly corresponds with the research I have already done.  This review was written in 2013 and is interesting because we have the same views today as we did a while ago. The other review I read that was interesting was from Example Essays, and the author wrote about how her experiences were similar to those of Tan’s. She talks about how her grandparents were from Italy so their English was considered “broken” as well. She had grown up listening to it as well as Tan, which made it very easy for the author to read this writing of “Mother Tongue”. She talks about how her grandparents were also looked down upon for not being able to speak perfect English. Also, in this review she talks about how the language she grew up listening to, “broken English”, “shaped the way she saw things, expressed things, made sense of the world.” I think it is amazing how Tan’s writing of “Mother Tongue” can be interpreted in many ways but still have an underlying similarity. 

My interpretation of “Mother Tongue” is similar to the reviews that I have previously expressed. Even though I grew up in a family where English was our only language I can imagine what it must have been like for them growing up. My ancestors are not from originally from America, and I have heard many stories from my grandma about how they were treated when they came to America for the first time, and how things were not always equal. Researching the topic of Chinese-Americans and what life was like for them when they first came to America was very interesting and changed my view on Amy Tan’s “Mother Tongue.” My research really made me reflect on how things are today, and made me think about if things have changed or not. I came to the conclusion that things will never be perfect in America, just like the rest of the world, but I do believe that we are making changes in the right places regarding immigrants from other countries. 
