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.