Response to Amy Tan's "Mother Tongue"

After reading Amy Tan's short story "Mother Tongue", my views about the type of English one speaks and how it is received by others have changed a little bit. I enjoyed reading this story. I feel like I can relate to this story because I also have parents whose primary language is not English. Me and my siblings understand my parents just fine when they are speaking English to us but some people outside of our family have trouble understanding them because it is a sort of broken English. Me and my siblings sometimes find ourselves translating words for my parents or even explaining their words to a person they are having a conversation with. Most of the time, other people understand my parents just fine even with the type of English they speak.


I always thought that most people would assist a person or try their best to assist that person despite that person speaking a different form of a language. There are a couple examples in this short story that say otherwise such as this.


"She said she had spoken very good English, her best English, no mistakes. Still, she said, the hospital did not apologize when they said they had lost the CAT scan and she had come for nothing." The hospital workers treated her with disrespect because she did not speak perfect English. Then her and daughter came and talked with the hospital staff. "And when the doctor finally called her daughter, me, who spoke in perfect English — lo and behold — we had assurances the CAT scan would be found, promises that a conference call on Monday would be held, and apologies for any suffering my mother had gone through for a most regrettable mistake."The hospital treated her daughter better because she spoke "perfect English." I liked how this story gave us these example because it helped me visual the situation.


I also enjoyed the ending. She changed her major to English because it was her true passion but also, I think she wanted to change the perception that people have to study the field they are strongest in. When she wrote her first book, she made it so easy to read that even her mother could call it easy. She responded, “So easy to read.”