"Mother Tongue" by Amy Tan

In Amy Tan's reading "Mother Tongue," Amy describes how language can both unify and divide people in this world.
Amy starts her reading out in a room full of people all interested in hearing about her new book The Joy Luck Club, however in the far back corner sits a woman, her mother. Amy's mother was a Chinese woman who struggled to speak English clearly. Many times when Amy was young, she would often have to speak to people for her mother. For example, one time a stockbroker did not send a check on time, so Amy's mother had her call the company and ask where the check was. Another time, Amy's mother had gone to the doctor's office to pick up her CAT scan results. However when her mother asked for the CAT scan, the assistant said that her results had been lost, and she would have to make another appointment again, but when Amy asked for her mother's results, they sincerely apologized for losing the results, and would be sure to find them. This happened a lot to Amy's mother. It was as if people just acted like she had a problem. Amy describes her "mother's tongue" as broken. But to Amy that sounds as if it were "damaged," and this was not the case at all. Though Amy's mother read the Forbes report often language had always been a barrier in her life.
Sometimes Amy was very embarrassed by the way her mother talked. She said "I believed that her English reflected the quality that she had to say." But as Amy grew up, she began to see her mother's tongue as more than just "broken" but instead another statistic in life. Many times Asian-Americans tend to lean toward math and science careers, because English is not the primary language spoken at home. For Amy, English was also often a struggle, but she was willing to take the challenge. Other students, they had grew up speaking the English language at home, while for Amy her mother was not able to teach her to speak English. Many times when Amy took a test, grammatical phrases such as "Sunset to nightfall as ____ is to ____," caused her several issues. However this language barrier did not distract her from achieving her goal to become a writer.
To Amy, it did not matter what people thought of her book. Her mother's tongue was her inspiration, and the only opinion that mattered was her mother's.
For many people who are not brought up speaking the language, communication can be a big obstacle in everyday life, whether it may be talking to someone on a phone, or checking out at the grocery store. Without some form of communication, life's easiest tasks become such a struggle. For Amy Tan's mother, this was just the case.
From this article, I realized how difficult and at the same time frustrating, it can be to learn to speak a new language. As a student currently learning to speak French, often times like Amy's mother, I know what I want to say, but yet I can never find the words to say it. It is as if the thoughts and concepts are so clear in your mind, but the words are in disappearance. I can not believe that people would take advantage of another person struggling to learn a language. If only they were in that person's shoes, then maybe the situation would be different. Through this article, we learned that a language is both an advantage and disadvantage depending on the strength of the language the person speaks.