—Anonymous
After reading “Mother Tongue” by Amy Tan I realized that it was a great work of literature. The reason I thought so was because of the whole concept of why Amy Tan is writing her story, and that Is because she went supposed to be a writer at all. She explains how her parents took her to get an iQ test and the results showed that she was supposed to be good at math, but she didn’t want to fit that mold and became a writer late in her college career. This is a good piece of writing also because of how easy it is to read and understand everything she is saying. Tan wanted people tp understand that just because you are an immigrant doesn’t mean you should not be treated differently because of your literacy level. Her mother was an example of being treated differently and she talks about this in her writing. Tan described the situation of when her mother went to the hospital for her CAT scan and they didn’t want to give her the results, she exclaimed “She said they would not give her any more information until the next time and she would have to make another appointment for that. So she said she would not leave until the doctor called her daughter. She wouldn’t budge. And when the doctor finally called her daughter, me, who spoke in perfect English”(Tan 2). Her mother knew how to speak English, maybe not perfectly but enough for people to understand her but people still treated her as if she was irrelevant. Tan wanted her audience to understand the significance of language in America, because it is like a tool that you can not live without or else you will get nowhere. It is hard to read certain writings or texts because they are written in such a way, but Tan wrote a very complex and interesting piece and it was very easy to understand and that is why it is a great writing.
