Amy Tan’s “Mother Tongue” is an essay about how Tan felt vulnerable speaking so many different “Englishs” to those around her, but especially the type of broken English that her and her mother spoke to one another. In the essay, Tan reflects on her realization of the struggles her mother had to go through as a first generation Asian immigrant coming to America. Almost immediately after arriving in America, Tan describes different ways her mother automatically faced prejudices. Immigrants in America have always been discriminated against. People like to believe in the American dream and that we live in a world with no racism. However, even though many progressive people are accepting, many institutions, companies, and individuals still see America as having a race hierarchy and anyone who does not look, speak or act in the same way they do, are automatically inferior. Tan often saw first-hand what her mother experienced and yet, she writes of how it was not empathy that she felt for her mother, but guilt and shame. The way she spoke different versions of English to her mother, her peers and later her audience shows the emphasis on how she was never accepting of the way her mother spoke English, or the way she spoke English to her mother. Tan’s 1989 essay highlights the underlying racism in America and how different generations of the same family deal with stereotypes and assimilation. 

Erika Lee’s “Immigration and America’s Open Door” is a summary on Roger Daniel’s “Guarding the Golden Door”. The summary breaks the book into two parts. The first part starts at the beginning of immigration to America in 1882 with the Chinese Exclusion Act and runs until 1965. The second part picks up in 1965 and finishes with the aftermath of 9/11. In the summary, Lee speaks about the different racist acts that were passed that kept certain groups such as the Chinese, Latin American, and Filipino people from entering this country, and how immigrants of European decent or people who already had family living in the states had easier access into the country. The summary unveils a lot of underlying racism within immigration laws of the past and once people finally got in to the nation how they were not only taken advantage of by other people, but how they were closely restricted by the government. 

In 1882, the Chinese Exclusion Act was passed in America that prohibited any Chinese immigrants from entering the United States (Lee 69). This act remained intact for 60 years and was only repealed as a “wartime effort to shore up China’s support during the war” (Lee 71). When this act was repealed, and hundreds of thousands of Chinese started to flood the gates of America, Tan’s mother was one of them. This law that was based on racism and classism, later birthed many different stereotypes for the Asian American immigrants.   Derogatory phrases and actions were often used to belittle these people and many of these out-of-date actions are still prevalent today. In the time of Tan’s childhood, many children of immigrants all felt the need to “Americanize” the earlier generations of their families. Tan had the same troubles these children had because often people could not understand what her mother was saying, and Tan would often have to “translate” her mother’s English into what others would consider “normal” English. This was a struggle for her, because of the embarrassment she felt that she had to communicate for her mother, but also the anger that she had towards people who would take advantage of her mother because of her English. 

In “Globalization and “Asian Values”: Teaching and Theorizing Asian American Literature” by Yuan Shu the author reflects on his class about Asian American Literature and how “Asian values” are seen as either nonexistent or forced onto people. Shu argues that instead of just teaching these values, students and professors together should put them on to a global scale and infer the similarities between American and Asian values. 

America has taken “Asian Values” and incorporated them into American society to help people believe in the American dream. He then analyzes different texts including “The Joy Luck Club” by Amy Tan and “The Woman Warrior” by Hong Kingston and talks about how each deal with assimilation into American culture and what the protagonist in each book values the most. When he talks about “The Joy Luck Club”, Shu and his students analyze the different symbols and instances that relate to immigration, assimilation, a strained mother-daughter relationship and holding on to another culture in a different country. Through Shu’s examination of these ideas he shows the students that many of the “Asian values” are not actually that different from American values. 

Tan explains the guilt of the younger generations through her essay, through talking about the shame she felt when people told her they could not understand her mother and when she had to be her voice. Yuan Shu’s “Globalization and “Asian Values”: Teaching and Theorizing Asian American Literature” enhances Tan’s uneasiness and shame around her mother because her mother did not assimilate to American culture the way she did. She does not realize her guilt towards her mother until she is giving a talk to her fans and her mother is in the audience. She later writes how she speaks the same English to her husband that she does to her mother, so this “broken” English is her language of love. Through Shu’s essay, one can understand Tan’s situation because many immigrants coming to the states go through the same thing. The way younger generations assimilate better into American society than older generations enhance Tan’s embarrassment of her mother’s speech because her mother did not assimilate to American culture the way she did.  

In “Mother Tongue” Tan writes about how many of her books are based on her mother and their relationship. In “The Joy Luck Club”, one of the daughter’s values that she shares with Tan is success. Since Tan’s mother could never reach the level of success that she did because of the language barrier, Tan felt ashamed and guilty for feeling ashamed. Tan’s mother never assimilated in the ways that Tan herself could. Growing up, Tan learned perfect English through school, peers and watching TV. Her mother did not assimilate like that and was often discriminated against because of her thick accent and many people did not help her or were not nice to her because they claimed that “they could not understand her”. Based on the cultural context of assimilation in America, there is a strain between the parental figure and the child because the two generations are essentially living in two different cultures and therefore do not understand one another. Tan felt like this for a long time with her mother because she could not understand why her mother could not assimilate like she could because they had both been in the country for the same amount of time.  

Amy Tan is someone who clearly values hard work and success. This success was always important to Tan, and as the child of an immigrant, it was hard for her to see her mother not achieve the same success she did because of the accent barrier and people taking advantage of her mother. The assumptions that people made about her mother were based on racist immigration laws that dated back to 1882. Tan’s “Mother Tongue” highlights how different generations of the same family deal with stereotypes and assimilation and the underlying racism in America that was instilled on people through the racist immigration laws like the Chinese Exclusion Act. Tan realizes that even though she loves her mother, she was always embarrassed of her because she could never adjust to life in America the way Tan did. Tan did not even realize this shame of her mother until her mother came to one of her talks, and Tan realized that something felt off and it was the fact that her mother was sitting in the audience and she was speaking perfect English and not the English she speaks at home to her mother. Later in the essay, Tan accepts her mother for who she is and realizes that it is not her fault for blaming her mother or her mother’s fault for not speaking perfect English, but it is the people who automatically judge Tan’s mother for not sounding the same as other Americans. Since her mother speaks “broken” English, she is automatically discriminated against and will never know the same success as her daughter.  
