How Amy Tan Relates The Immigrant Experience With Her Mother’s

Essay by PaperNerd ContributorCollege, Undergraduate October 2001

download word file, 2 pages 5.0

Acceptance is an important step to communication. The prejudiceness of people can push acceptance away lacking the communication that could bring them together. In Amy Tan's essay, "Mother Tongue,"� she tells about her mother's immigrant experience and her feelings towards her mother's struggles with the English language.

Many people come to the U.S. hoping for a better life, but are faced with tough challenges. Of all the challenges they are faced with, the language barrier is one of the hardest to break through. Tan's mother has gone through many experiences that shows how hard it is for immigrants to communicate with fluent English speaking officials. For example, people in department stores, banks, and restaurants did not take her mother seriously. Even in serious situations professional officials, which are looked up to, are still rude to her due to her limited English. Like her incident with the stock broker and the doctor.

It is a shame how these highly educated officials in which we think so highly of can be so low.

In a way, we can all relate to Tan's embarrassment towards her mother. I am pretty sure there has been times when our parents are faced with something they are not familiar with and they struggle with it to try to get pass it the best they can. At the time, we do not see how much harder it is for our parents being in the situation then it is for us because we are just there with them. When we think back, we see our parents hardship and are embarrassed and ashamed at ourselves for being so inconsiderate of their effort to deal with the situation. From Tan's essay, we can see how her feelings towards her mother's limited English changed as she matured. First being...