Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Mother Tongue, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Self-Acceptance
Expressiveness and the Limits of Language
Prejudice
Storytelling and Asian-American Voices
Summary
Analysis
Amy Tan opens the essay with a disclaimer: she is not a “scholar” of the English language. Instead, she self-identifies as a writer, focusing on the power and strength of words within the language and how she personally uses them in her life and writing. Tan claims to use “different Englishes” and recalls experiences in her past to show how she uses language in her life.
Tan’s immediate disclaimer about her scholarly authority challenges expectation, forcing readers to reconsider their preconceptions about language, which are likely rooted in a somewhat academic discourse. Calling attention to the power of individual words and suggesting the multiplicity of the English language, Tan ensures that readers will come to understand what her variations on the English language (that is, her “Englishes”) look like.
Themes
Detailing a talk she recently gave for her book, The Joy Luck Club, Tan remembers feeling like her speech sounded wrong, despite having given the same address multiple times before. For the first time, Tan’s mother was present, and Tan realized that her mother had never heard her daughter speak with such a professional tone. The speech was heavy, and “burdened” with standardized forms of English; a language Tan associates with school, not her mother.
Tan’s moment of realization emphasizes how speech and tone are influenced by the people she is around. The collision of two social spheres—the private and the public—in one space creates a feeling of awkwardness for Tan. As a result of her mother’s presence, Tan’s hyperawareness of the weight of her words and their formality hints that a different language is used at home and that there is a different version of Tan that her mother sees.
Themes
Tan recalls a walk with her mother during which they discuss the topic of furniture prices. Tan’s response, “not waste money that way,” illustrate Tan’s shifts in English when speaking with her mother. Tan’s husband, who is used to her frequent changes in speech, does not detect the shift. Tan reflects on her use of language, identifying the English used with her mother and husband as one of “intimacy, a different sort of English that relates to family talk.”
Tan’s conversation with her mother illustrates the ease with which she shifts between the different “Englishes” she speaks. Not only does she speak her “mother tongue” with her mother, but she also speaks it with those who are closest to her, such as her husband. Tan’s consciousness of the type of communication her “mother tongue” enables ultimately suggests the integral role of this language to Tan’s identity.
Themes
Tan records a recent conversation with her mother to illustrate the rhythm of her speech. First, Tan briefly narrates a version of her mother’s story: a Chinese political gangster who shares her mother’s last name attends a family funeral to pay his respects. Afterwards, Tan directly quotes her mother from the recording.
By providing a transcript of this conversation with her mother, Tan creates space within the essay for her mother to better represent herself. Providing stories from her mother’s past in China additionally creates context for readers by illustrating specifically how Tan’s mother engages with the world around her—and this, in turn, has informed Tan’s own upbringing and her subsequent perceptions of the world.
Themes
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Tan explains the type of English her mother uses. She reads and listens to media in “standard” English, but Tan’s friends can only understand a percentage of what she says. While Tan cannot “begin to understand” the media her mother engages with, her spoken English is “perfectly clear” to Tan and profoundly influences Tan’s life.
Tan’s presentation of her mother emphasizes the complexity of her experience and the external—societal—influence on her identity. Though Mrs. Tan engages with and understands multiple forms of “standard” English, her social interactions are limited by people who refuse to listen to and understand her. The contrast between what Tan understands and what her friends understand when listening to media in “standard” English begins to suggest the unique space Tan occupies in American society as someone who has grown up speaking non-standard English.
Themes
Tan experiences a complicated relationship with her mother and her mother’s English; she doesn’t like using the words “broken” and “fractured” to describe it, and she feels like such words reduce her mother’s expressive communication. Customer service workers treat her mother differently, using the English she speaks against her and even pretending they cannot understand her, thus giving themselves a way to ignore her.
The complicated relationship Tan has with her mother’s English can perhaps best be understood in the way she describes this version of English. Calling attention to words like “limited” that are often used to describe the extent of non-native English speakers’ linguistic ability, Tan suggests that society tends to assume there’s only one—“standard”—form of English.
Themes
Her mother is aware of how people perceive and misunderstand her and, as a result, Tan must take professional phone calls on her behalf. Imitating her mother, teenaged Tan answers a call from her stockbroker to settle an issue regarding a late check while her mother expresses her frustration in the background: “if I don’t receive the check immediately, I am going to have to speak to your manager when I’m in New York next week.” Mrs. Tan follows through on her promise to both her daughter and the broker, appearing in the New York office exactly a week later.
Tan’s story about facilitating her mother’s call with her stockbroker illustrates her ever-growing association of embarrassment with her “mother tongue.” The tension of Tan’s mother speaking over her as she attempts to converse with the broker is merely a sample of the embarrassment Tan experiences the following week in the broker’s New York office. Tan’s negative experiences resulting from language barriers provide possible answers as to why she gravitates towards “standardized” English.
Themes
In a more recent event, despite speaking “very good English,” her mother’s English is misunderstood. While visiting the hospital to follow up on CAT scan results, hospital staff inform Mrs. Tan that her scans are missing and that she will need to make another appointment. For the doctor, the only way to resolve the issue is to call Tan, who can speak “perfect English.” Once Tan is involved, her mother receives apologies and respect, and a conference call is scheduled for the following Monday to discuss the scan results.
Tan’s experience speaking to doctors on her mother’s behalf calls attention to the role language plays in the way people treat each other. The negative treatment and dismissive attitude Mrs. Tan receives from medical staff in response to her medical concern emphasizes the role society has played in Tan’s conflict between Englishes. Tan receives preferential treatment for speaking “standard” English, while her mother is ignored.
Themes
Describing her experiences alongside sociological and linguistic studies, Tan suggests that children of American immigrants are perhaps most affected by the languages their parents speak at home. In her childhood, Tan does not perform poorly in her English studies at school, but when her scores are held beside math and science assignments, it appears that her English is somewhat lacking.
Tan’s reference to scholarship regarding children of immigrants emphasizes the shared experiences of first-generation children of immigrants. What’s more, she indicates that non-native speakers aren’t linguistically inept—rather, Western society tends to judge them based solely on their facility with standardized English, thus failing to accurately capture their true linguistic abilities; after all, children like Tan might very well have great linguistic skills, but these skills won’t necessarily apply to standardized English.
Themes
To better explain these apparent differences, Tan describes the inner conflict which comes with sitting through English tests. While science and math are “precise,” English studies and their assessments rely on an individual’s “personal experience.” There are more ways than one to answer common grammar exercises, according to Tan’s mother, therefore influencing and complicating the way Tan thinks and responds to the English used in school.
Tan’s explanation of English learning assessments further emphasizes the subjectivity of language. Tan appears to perform better in science and math because they are formulaic and don’t rely on qualitative judgements based on personal experience. As such, Tan’s difficulty with grammar exercises suggests the limits that “standardized” English education places on students at a young age.
Themes
Tan’s English from home is much more expressive. At school, Tan doesn’t follow the same path of association that her peers do. Word analogies and standard English don’t elicit the associations for Tan that her teachers would hope for; instead, language is visual. To achieve the result that a “sunset is to nightfall” word association exercise demands, Tan says she would have to imagine a scenario where she stays out after sunset before she could create the correct association.
Tan’s experience with word problems and analogies at school lend to her frustrations with her “mother tongue,” as the associations she makes are not the same as her peers’. The difficulty Tan experiences, once again, negatively impacts the view she has of her mother’s English as well as how she perceives herself.
Themes
Tan meditates on her relationship and experience with her mother’s English in response to questions about Asian American representation in American literature. Though she cannot, and does not, provide a definitive answer, she suggests that her “mother tongue” and its effect on her schooling and understanding of standard English influences how she—and other Asian Americans—engage with American literature.
Tan’s reference to her negative experiences in school with “standard” English suggests the limitations of an inflexible education system. In drawing connections between her own experiences and the AAPI (Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders) community, Tan illustrates the way American literature closely aligns with “standardized” English.
Themes
Tan’s relationship with her own writing has changed over the course of her career. She recalls when she began writing fiction, quoting a line of “standard English” from her first draft of The Joy Luck Club: “that was my mental quandary in its nascent state.” Though illustrative of her “mastery” of English, it is a line that she can “barely pronounce.”
Tan’s specific mention of her journey with The Joy Luck Club and the changes it has undergone illustrates her growth as an author—she has realized that perfect, “standard” English shouldn’t necessarily define her writing. In calling attention to the “masterful” line and the difficulty she would have in pronouncing it, Tan emphasizes the disconnect she has with “standard” English despite trying so hard to acclimate to it.
Themes
Now, Tan imagines a reader while she writes, one who will understand the many “Englishes” she grew up with. Imagining her mother, Tan writes for an audience of mothers and daughters, using a voice that she has grown to love and accept that encapsulates the space between English and Chinese that is nonexistent in English language tests. Tan’s newfound value in the language of her “mother tongue” alters her previous conception that success follows the mastery of “standard English.” Instead, Tan prioritizes her mother’s reading of her work, feeling a sense of pride and accomplishment upon hearing her mother say, “so easy to read.”
Tan’s arrival at an imagined reader illustrates a critical point of acceptance as an author and first-generation daughter of Chinese immigrants. Combining the variations of language between “standard” English and her “mother tongue,” Tan’s work emphasizes the importance of personal identity within her writing, reconfiguring the image of success by reconciling her own conceptions of it.
Themes
