Superman and Me

In this short story, a young Indian lives a life without education and has striking contrasts from the lives we have currently. Alexie lives in a society where they were expected to fail in the non-Indian world, but Alexie refused to fail. Alexie’s discourse community did not encourage their children to receive education and this affects the community as a whole because their limited knowledge cannot support the community forever. Alexie shares this story of how he wants to be different and how much he desired to read. Similarly, for writing our papers, we could bring up a circumstance that limited our productivity and explain how we dealt with it because of how much our lives differed from our peers. We all have different stories to tell, and we do not have the same origin beliefs.

Mother Tongue

In this reading, Tan gives a piece of her personal life with her family and explains that her mother spoke “broken” English. Tan understood what her mother tried to convey to her even if it was not using the sophisticated English we currently use. However, not many were kind to her and criticized her for the way she spoke English. Tan would have to talk to other people in her place in order to cover for her mother’s “broken” English. Not all of our families have something this sort of circumstance where a child had to speak in place for their mother, so it’s important to bring that up because we do not all have the same experience. My experience is very similar to Tan’s case because I have to translate English into Cantonese just so that my parents could understand what the phone was trying to ask or for what the letter was trying to tell her. It isn’t always easy, and some do not have to go through these difficulties that make these experiences unique to write when we write our paper.

Superman and Me Summary and Response

Superman and Me is a story about an Indian boy, Sherman Alexie, learning to read by looking through Superman comic books. I think it is important to note that Alexie learned how to read just by acting out the scenes in the comic books. This experience is similar to the story of Frankenstein’s monster, where the monster learned how to read and communicate by looking at others. Language is incredibly important in shaping a young, undeveloped mind. Alexie loved books from a young age because of his father’s love of books. Alexie has learned to appreciate the things that he is given and tried to exceed everyone’s expectations of him. Indians and non-Indians taunted Alexie because he was an avid learner in class. Alexie ended up becoming a writer and has inspired other students to try their best.

Mother Tongue Summary and Response 

Mother Tongue is written about the author’s mother and talks about the different type of language or tone that is spoken to others. The author, Amy Tan, realized that she speaks differently in a more professional setting than with her family. Her mother speaks in broken English (Chinglish if you will) and only a certain number of people are actually able to understand her. However, the way her mom speaks makes her unique and her own person. Tan then emphasizes that the language spoken in the family heavily impacts the language of the child. I thought that this was interesting because it coincides with Alexie’s story of how his father’s interest in books has ultimately made him become a writer.

Superman and Me

Alexie’s “Superman and Me,” is a Literacy Narrative of his experience with books and his fight against the Indian Reservation stereotype. Alexie writes about his escape and how the knowledge he gained from books, even though he wasn’t initially reading correctly, had given him an advantage over others. He was able to identify with the language of images and used what he knew, which was actions and body language, to form an idea of what was happening. He also realized that the more he read and exposed himself to this new type of language, the more he could achieve small feats which were answering questions and being involved in the classroom. One thing that stood out to me in his story was the fact that he viewed paragraphs as fences. This metaphor made me reminisce because I had this same experience when I was younger and was trying to make sense of reading and writing. Alexie didn’t know the exact meaning of ‘paragraph’ but, he had an idea of what it was and used that to develop his understanding further.

Mother Tongue

Tan’s “Mother Tongue” is about her journey with the English language and the reason behind her challenges with it. She explains that she realized it was the language she used at home with her family that became so natural that she could hardly escape from it. She then goes on to say that instead of fighting against the ‘Mother Tongue’ any longer she decided to embrace it and write stories that were easily understandable and that captured the real intent rather than having to sound ‘smart.’ I relate with this story, in a way, because I speak a dialect in my home that would seem foreign to those that have never heard anything like it before. Tan’s story reminds me of when I was younger and I would have to speak for my parents because even though they knew what they wanted to say, they couldn’t quite find the exact words that would have the other person understand them. I also understand the fact that she understood her mother perfectly when others didn’t because it was the language she grew up with and it was embedded into her thought process. I know sometimes I can’t express certain things without relating it to a Guyanese term and then trying to figure out what is most similar to it in the English language. What surprised me the most, however, was the difference in treatment Tan’s mother received from the hospital before and after they spoke to Tan. I was shocked as to the drastic change in the hospital staff’s demeanor and it made me angry that any person would be treated that way.

Superman and Me

The author writes a narrative about how books has changed his entire life. Being raised in an Indian reservation, life had challenges due to how non-Indians saw and treated those from the reservation. Alexie learned to read by himself at a very young age and was a prodigy at reading, even if it isn’t recognized outside of where he had lived.  With the example of when he first read a Superman comic book, it shows how his mind was able to develop a way to find meaning behind sentences with only the contexts of the images within the comic. Through reading, Alexie saw similarities between how passages are arranged and it’s similarities in real life. He compares a house to a paragraph and the words of those paragraphs being the family members. Alexie also address the stereotypes about Indians aren’t smart or devoted to learning at the same level as someone who attends a school outside of the reservation. He also notes how even though the non-Indians in his school doesn’t want him to succeed, with the reason being because some whites are such self-loathing that they end up hanging out with Indians. The narrative by Alexie puts a lot of insight on how ambition leads to success, despite the lack of education you might have in the past.

Mother Tongue

Amy Tan writes about how the way someone talks should not be the limiting factor of the idea that they are trying to convey. She talks about her mother, who is Asian and knows a large amount of English and can read a lot as well. However throughout Tan’s many experiences, the way that her mom talks has a different impact on how people received a message than someone who spoke “proper English”. The English that people often refers to is one that has many grammatical factors that makes them sound professionally. However with the way that Tan’s mother speaks, despite the topic she addresses is very clear, people don’t seem to understand her. Now they might just not take her seriously due to her English not being said the “proper way”, or they just really don’t understand her, is up to debate. Through Tan realizing that society has somewhat stereotyped what is considered as the correct and incorrect ways of speaking English. That sentences that are formal holds just the same value as a sentence consisting of a few words. Language doesn’t have to be complex, and can be understood much more frequently if the standard of “proper English”, were to drop so that everyone would be able to understand what is being said.

Response

Tan addresses several good points when it comes to communication, especially if it’s through the same language. Since it is the same language, wouldn’t it be easy to understand the ideas being addressed? Even if one person uses fewer words than others, they have the same message. In fact it is much more easier to understand when people talks with less words, as the main idea is being addresses without being obstructed by those various words that are meant to connect ideas together, even though they are basically pointless. I like how Tan realizes that it isn’t her mother’s fault that no one seems to understand her due to her “limited” vocabulary, as the stereotype of the proper way to speak a language makes people less acceptable to formats of language that aren’t the status quo.

With Alexie’s passage, I had remembered that I read one of the books he had written, when I was a freshman in high school. The book is The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, which draws a lot of inspiration from Alexie’s personal experiences growing up in an Indian reserve. It is a first-person narrative, where the main character represents Alexie in many ways, with the main one being that they both try to destroy the status quo that whites had on Indians. In the book, the main character Arnold is a very intelligent student, despite having brain deformities since birth. Like Alexie, Arnold was limited in education due to the lack of funding and care that the schools near the reserve has. Arnold also had a future like Alexie, despite the challenges and zero-to-none chances that growing up in an Indian reserve had.

“Superman and Me,” Sherman Alexie

Sherman Alexie recounts her childhood experiences of being a poor Indian boy on a government reservation who, unlike others, held a strong interest in books. Through reading and maintaining an interest in his education, Alexie diverged from the path of the common uneducated and “defeated” Indian-American. Through reading, Alexie discovers the purpose of paragraphs and describes his own perception of them as a “fence” that held words. The substance inside these fences, as Alexie explains, were separate elements and entities such as individuals, locations, characteristics, and basically everything else. His understanding of the world in paragraphs contributed to a greater understanding of himself and his surroundings, both in his youth and adulthood. I have always found this concept, though straightforward, extremely practical in the understanding of oneself. For our upcoming assignment, using this metaphor could be extremely useful.

 

“Mother Tongue, “Amy Tan, pgs. 165-170

In “Mother Tongue “ by Amy Tan, the intrinsic change of language depending on the situation is explored. Amy Tan recounts her experience in noticing how her language changes depending on who her audience is. With her mother, the usual formality of her speech is substituted by a more unceremonious dialect. Tan analyzes and contributes this to the cultural implications of being an Asian-American. Tan asserts that growing up in an immigrant household played a role in the development of her language and to some extent, inadvertently limited it. She defends this claim by connecting it to the fact that Asian-American representation and involvement in literature and language is very minimal compared to that of sciences and maths. This correlation is evident and widespread in Amy Tan’s personal use of language and could probably be observed in that of many others. Since English is my second language and that of my fathers, this only happens after my abilities to use language surpassed his. I naturally tone down my language when speaking to my father but I do not “dumb” it down. I limit my language to match my father’s ability to comprehend English but what I am expressing still holds the same meaning.

 

In “Superman and Me” by Sherman Alexie, he talks about how he learned how to read by a Superman comic book. He states that his father loved books and would always purchase many books so he learned to love books as well. When he was very young, although he doesn’t remember the content, he looked at a Superman comic book and taught himself the knowledge of paragraphs. Then everything he could think of, he thought of in paragraphs. This is interesting because I never thought of it that way. He compares different locations to paragraphs and even compares the different people in these locations to paragraphs. However, his knowledge of knowing how to read was difficult to sustain due to the environment he lived in. Despite this, he pushed through and continued to work hard and became a writer which is very inspiring.

In “Mother Tongue” by Amy Tan, she talks about how we have and utilize different languages according to a situation. She supports this argument by giving an example of a speech she’s given to a crowd. When she was giving this speech, she spoke in perfect grammar and full sentence, what school has taught her. However, she soon realized that this very speech she was giving was completely different from the way she spoke to her mom. To her mom, she would speak in broken English. To other people, they might not understand the broken language she uses with her mom, however, to her and her mom, they have an understanding of what they are saying to each other. This suggests that everyone uses different forms of languages when they encounter different people. I can relate to the author because I also use broken English at home and use various types of languages when I’m speaking to my friends and when I’m speaking to professionals.

Superman and Me

This short story is about a Native American boy who teaches himself how to read at a young age through Superman comic books. Despite the numerous circumstances placed against him such as family financial problems and stereotypes from non-Native Americans, he inherits his father’s love of books and goes on to become a writer. Along the way, he has learned to view his life and the world around him as “paragraphs” or things held together that shared a common purpose. For example, his house was a “paragraph” within the United States and he was a “paragraph” within his family. In a sense, literacy and books has become a way in which he “saved his own life” and found his life’s vocation. He then goes on to visit various Native American schools on reservations in an attempt to share his inspiration of reading so that they can progress through society despite the similar circumstances placed against them that were placed against him.

Mother Tongue

In this article, the writer for The Joy Luck Club speaks about her own personal experience growing up as an Asian American and encountering all the different types of “Englishes” being spoken in her life. Like most children of immigrants, we grow up with parents whose English is not always the flawless grammatically correct type of English we grow accustomed to hearing in schools and professional work places. However, instead of regarding it as “broken” or “limited”, she goes on to explain that in a sense, this different type of English that most Asian American children grow up with can be fulfilling and whole in its own way. She then says that just because it’s different than what professional English is, it isn’t lacking and doesn’t need to be fixed. She also says that the book The Joy Luck Club was actually written with her mother as the audience and implies that since her mother found the book easy to read, her purpose for writing it was fulfilled.

Response

Language is a tool that has a different meaning in every person’s life. To some, it can be a tool used to help get them ahead in life despite the obstacles placed against them. To others, it can be a unique way to unite and relate to people in a way that’s different than how they might interact with others outside of that group. Just like how Sherman Alexie and Amy Tan describes how language impacted their lives, many other people have doubtlessly shared similar experiences as them when thinking about how language intertwines with some of the most important aspects of their lives.