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Background & Summary of Mother Tongue

Amy Tan is an Asian-American writer whose works focus a lot on relationships between mothers and daughters. This is because she grew up in a home with her Chinese mother who spoke English that was, at best, difficult for many people to understand. Tan came to realize this because when Tan was with her mother, she spoke English differently, more simply, like her mother.

In the essay, Mother Tongue, we see an article about Amy Tan contemplating how her background affected her life, her education, held her between two worlds, and brought her shame, but ultimately she learns to embrace her background.

Themes: Finding Her Voice

Amy Tan found her voice as a writer by spending time with her mother who spoke broken English. It is a bit surprising that Tan ended up as a writer considering the fact that she was expected to study the sciences. She tells us in her essay, Mother Tongue, ''I was told by my former boss that writing was my worst skill and I should hone my talents toward account management.'' However, Tan was stubborn and determined, so she didn't take his criticism to heart; she made it work for her.

She was giving a talk to a group of people about her book, Joy Luck Club, and she found herself using English that was sophisticated and complex. While she was talking, she was aware of the fact that her mother was sitting in the back; it was the first time her mother had come to hear her speak. Tan was cognizant of the fact that she was using English she did not use around her mother. It hit her that the two worlds she had grown up in had impacted her writing as well as her life.

Themes: Two Worlds

Tan is stuck between two worlds. When she is with her mother, she speaks in simple English, but out in the world, she shifts to an English that is more formal and acceptable. Tan relates her story of her mother talking about a gangster that wanted her family in China to adopt him because her family had more status. She tells us the story using her mother's language so we can see how expressive her mother's broken English is. Even though the language is not what we may be used to, her story is something we can follow. It is vivid with detail and images.

But Tan also tells us that many of her friends have a difficult time understanding what her mother is saying. Some of her friends go so far as to say they understand none of what she says, and this is particularly interesting because Mrs. Tan's understanding of English is far greater than she would have us believe. She is an avid pleasure reader, and she is a woman who is on top of her financial situation, in part, because she reads Forbes and the Wall Street Journal.

For Tan, her mother's language is the language of her childhood, and it is clear, vivid, and full of imagery. She has no difficulties understanding exactly what her mother is saying. She knows that this simple English is the same language that helped her understand the world, helped her formulate her views, and helped her learn to express herself.

Themes: Shame

Still, Tan has felt shame. When she was young, her mother's English would cause her embarrassment. Often, she would have to intervene so her mother could be understood. She relates a story where she pretended to be her mother on the phone talking to her mother's stockbroker about a missing check. We feel her pain as this young girl tries to sound like her mother, while her mother is talking loudly in the background telling her what to say. No one was fooled, but Amy Tan felt the heat of shame. This was not the first time it had happened, and it would not be the last.

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amy tan's mother tongue: summary & themes - video & lesson transcript | study.com

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Amy Tan's Mother Tongue: Summary & Themes - Video & Lesson Transcript | Study.com

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In the essay, 'Mother Tongue' by Amy Tan, we are asked to consider how the language we grow up with affects us throughout our lives. The essay...

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As her Facebook page states, "Amy Tan failed her mother's expectations that she become a doctor and concert pianist. She settled on writing fiction." Said "settling" began when the now acclaimed author was 33 years old, and by 34 her first short story was published. Three years later, in 1989, she published her first book, a collection of short stories called The Joy Luck Club, which became the longest-running New York Times bestseller that year. Today, February 19th, is Amy Tan's 64th birthday, and we're celebrating this accomplished and fascinating woman whose name you likely know, by sharing what you might not know about her.

"My mother didn't teach me lessons about being Chinese as strongly as she did the notion of who I was as a female."

The American writer's much-loved, best-selling novels have been translated into 35 languages, from Spanish, French, and Finnish to Chinese, Arabic, and Hebrew. They include The Joy Luck Club (adapted into a successful film in 1993), The Kitchen God's Wife, The Hundred Secret Senses, The Bonesetter's Daughter, Saving Fish from Drowning, and The Valley of Amazement, all New York Times bestsellers and recipients of various awards. She is also the author of a memoir, The Opposite of Fate, two children's books, The Moon Lady and Sagwa, The Chinese Siamese Cat, and numerous articles for magazines, including The New Yorker, Harper's Bazaar, and National Geographic. She is also the author of the short story Rules for Virgins.

Curiously Fun Facts About Amy Tan:

Amy was the lead rhythm dominatrix, backup singer and second tambourine with the Rock Bottom Remainders, a unique garage band comprised of some of today's most shining literary lights... we're talking REALLY famous authors... Kathi Kamen Goldmark, Stephen King, Dave Barry, Matt Groening, Greg Iles, Mitch Albom, Roy Blount Jr, Ridley Pearson, Sam Barry and Scott Turow. Between them, they've published more than 150 titles, sold more than 150 million books, and been translated into more than 25 languages. But once a year they shed their pen-and-pencil clutching personas and became rock stars, complete with roadies, groupies and a wicked cool tour bus. Hailed by critics as having "one of the world's highest ratios of noise to talent," the Remainders had no music videos, no record contract, no GRAMMY nominations - but did have over 159,000 hits on Google. More importantly, since the band's founding in Anaheim in 1992 - at a book convention - they raised over $2 million for various literacy causes. After a 20 year run, they performed their last public concert in June 2012.

Amy was a co-producer and co-screenwriter of the film version of The Joy Luck Club.

Amy has appeared as herself on The Simpsons.

Astounding Facts About Amy Tan:

"When Amy was fifteen, her father and older brother died of brain tumors six months apart. Her mother took Amy and her younger brother, John, to Europe, to see the world before a curse killed them all. They settled in Switzerland. Angry and confused, Amy found comfort in a counter-culture boyfriend-unemployed and psychiatrically suicidal, who hung with hippies. At age sixteen, Amy was arrested for drugs and let off with a warning."
"I think books were my salvation, they saved me from being miserable."
"She went from arrest to winning an American Baptist Scholarship to attend Linfield College in McMinnville, Oregon. There, in 1970, she met Lou DeMattei on a blind date." They have been together ever since, marrying in 1974.

Following the murder of a roommate in 1976, Amy left a linguistics doctoral program at UC Berkeley and was inspired by his intended career to work in the field of disabilities. "She became a Language Development Specialist for programs serving children with developmental disabilities, and later, she became the Director of a demonstration project on mainstreaming multicultural children with disabilities into the public school system.

Amy was bitten by a Lyme infected tick in 1999. The disease that manifested and ravaged her body and mind went undiagnosed for four years by a number of doctors at major urban medical centers. Among the host of horrific symptoms it caused, the Lyme also claimed all of the skills necessary for Amy to do her work... writing fiction suddenly became a challenge for the acclaimed author. With treatment, she fortunately regained her writing skills. "Today, while not cured, her disease is medically managed, and her health, by her own new definition, is excellent. She now has a valid excuse why she cannot drive and must have her husband play chauffeur."

Biographical Source: The Official Website Of Amy Tan - AmyTanAuthor.com

Lead Image: Author Amy Tan Facebook page

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What You May Not Know About Author Amy Tan... Curiously Fun And Astounding Facts

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Wishing a Happy Birthday to accomplished American author Amy Tan by highlighting some lesser known facts about her life.

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Visit Biography.com and study the career of New York Times-bestselling author, Amy Tan whose novel The Joy Luck Club explores the Chinese-American experience.

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1999-11-24 04:00:00 PDT San Francisco -- Readers of Amy Tan's best-selling novels have come to know Tan's mother, Daisy. "The Joy Luck Club," Tan's breakthrough 1989 book, was dedicated to Daisy Tan, telling the story of four Chinese immigrant mothers and their American-raised daughters.

Tan's 1991 novel "The Kitchen God's Wife" was based on the life story of her mother, who left behind an abusive husband and three daughters when she came to the United States from Shanghai in 1949.

On Monday, Daisy Tan died at her San Francisco home of complications from Alzheimer's disease, at the age of 83.

If not for Daisy Tan, Amy Tan may never have switched from her career as a free-lance business writer to become a successful novelist.

"My mother said to me about 20 years ago, during a moment when we weren't getting along well, 'If I die, what will you remember?' " her daughter recalled last night. "I realized I had no idea what I'd remember, and what was important. My first book was in answer to her question.

"In a way, she was really my muse," Amy Tan said. "She was not a literary person. She was not someone who read fiction. She did not read most of my books. And yet she was my muse.

"The questions she had, the fact she never felt that anything was impossible -- what's in all of my books is the quality of hope that she had in her life."

Daisy Tan had hope despite the hardships she had endured. After leaving her abusive husband, she married Baptist minister John Tan in the United States. He died of a brain tumor in 1968, the same year that Amy Tan's older brother died of the same disorder.

Daisy Tan's mother committed suicide. She came from a wealthy family, but she was considered a family disgrace because she was widowed at an early age and forced into concubinage, Amy Tan has said.

After the deaths of her husband and son, Daisy Tan took Amy and her surviving brother to live in Switzerland, where Amy finished high school. The family returned to Northern California in 1969.

"I was a complete brat," Tan said last night. "She once said that patience was her strength -- that if she didn't give up on me, she could endure anything."

A visitation will be held tonight at Green Street Mortuary, on 649 Green Street, from 7 p.m. to 8 p.m. Funeral services for Mrs. Tan will be held Friday at the mortuary, beginning at 11 a.m. The services include a marching band that will go from the mortuary into Chinatown.

Daisy Tan is survived by Amy and three other daughters, a son, two brothers, and seven grandchildren.

Daisy Tan was convinced that her dead mother communicated with Amy, telling her stories for her novels. Amy Tan hopes she still can communicate with Daisy Tan.

"When I write, it's such a meditative process. Ideas and images for stories come in unexpected ways -- sometimes in remarkable ways that I can't explain," Amy Tan said. "I often feel that I can't take credit. I'd like to think that my mom will come and help me."

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Mother of `Joy Luck Club' Author Amy Tan Is Dead

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"The Joy Luck Club," Tan's breakthrough 1989 book, was dedicated to Daisy Tan, telling the story of four Chinese immigrant mothers and their American-raised daughters. Tan's 1991 novel "The Kitchen God's Wife" was based on the life story of her mother, who left behind an abusive husband and three daughters when she came to the United States from Shanghai in 1949.

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Amy Tan was born on February 19, 1952 in Oakland, California to parents John and Daisy Tan. Both of her parents were Chinese immigrants who met and married shortly after arriving in the...

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The 1950s were the first full decade after the end of World War II and is remembered as a prosperous time of recovery from the Great Depression of the 1930s and the war years of the 1940s. Everyone collectively breathed a sigh of relief. It was a time of new styles that broke with the past, like mid-century modern design, and many firsts, inventions, and discoveries that would become symbolic of the 20th century as a time of looking forward.

In 1950, Diners Club, the first modern credit card was introduced, which would eventually change the financial lives of every American in the years to come. In February, Senator Joseph McCarthy (R-Wisconsin) claimed in a speech in West Virginia that there were over 200 Communists in the U.S. State Department, beginning a witch hunt that would result in the blacklisting of many Americans.

On June 17th, Dr. Richard Lawler performed the first organ transplant, a kidney in an Illinois woman with polycystic kidney disease; and, on the political front, US. President Harry S. Truman ordered the building of the hydrogen bomb, on June 25th, the Korean War began with the invasion of South Korea. On July 7, the Population Registration Act was enacted in South Africa, requiring that each inhabitant of the country would be classified and registered according to his or her "race." It would not be repealed until 1991.

On October 2, United Features Syndicate published Charles Schulz's first "Peanuts" cartoon strip in seven newspapers.

On June 27,1951, the first regularly-scheduled color TV program was introduced by CBS, "The World Is Yours!" with Ivan T. Sanderson, eventually bringing life-like shows into American homes. Truman signed the Treaty of San Francisco, a peace treaty with Japan on September 8, officially ending World War II. In October, Winston Churchill took the reins in Great Britain as prime minister for the first time after the close of World War II. In South Africa, people were forced to carry green identification cards that included their race; and under the Separate Representation of Voters Act people who were classed as "coloureds" were disenfranchised.

On February 6, 1952, Britain's Princess Elizabeth took over the responsibility of ruling England at age 25 after the death of her father, King George VI. She would be officially crowned Queen Elizabeth II the next year. From December 5th to the 9th, Londoners suffered through the Great Smog of 1952, a severe air pollution event that caused deaths from breathing issues numbering in the thousands.

In the "firsts" department, tinted glass became available in Ford automobiles (although only 6% of customers wanted such a thing), and on July 2, Jonas Salk and colleagues at the Virus Research Lab at the University of Pittsburgh began testing for a successful polio vaccine. They tried their refined vaccine on children who had recovered from polio and discovered that it successfully produced antibodies for the virus.

In April 1953, Cambridge University scientists James Watson and Francis Crick published a paper in the scientific journal Nature, announcing the discovery of the double-helix chemical structure of DNA. On May 29, 1953, Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay became the first people to ever climb to the summit of Mount Everest, the ninth British expedition to attempt to do so.

Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin died of a cerebral hemorrhage on March 5 in Kutsevo Dacha, and on June 19, Americans Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were executed in the electric chair for conspiracy to commit espionage. Another first: in December, Hugh Hefner published the first Playboy magazine, featuring actress Marilyn Monroe on the cover and nude centerfold.

In a landmark decision on May 17, and after two rounds of argument, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled segregation was illegal in the Brown v. Board of Education decision.

In other news, on January 21, the first atomic submarine was launched in the Thames River in Connecticut, the U.S.S. Nautilus. On April 26, Jonas Salk's polio vaccine was given to 1.8 million children in a massive field trial. Epidemiological research by Richard Doll and A Bradford Hill published in the Journal of the American Medical Association on August 7, reported the first irrefutable evidence that men who smoked 35 or more cigarettes per day increased their likelihood of dying from lung cancer by a factor of 40.

The good news of 1955: On July 17, Disneyland Park opened, the first of two theme parks built at the Disneyland Resort in Anaheim, California, the only theme park designed and built by Walt Disney himself. Entrepreneur businessman Ray Kroc founded a franchise business on a successful restaurant operated by brothers Dick and Mac McDonald, forming what would become McDonald's.

The bad news: 24-year-old actor James Dean died in a car accident on September 20, after making only three movies.

The civil rights movement began with the August 28 murder of Emmett Till, the refusal on December 1 by Rosa Parks to give up her seat on the bus to a white man, and the subsequent Montgomery Bus Boycott.

In November, the first retractable seat belts were described in the Journal of the American Medical Association by neurologist C. Hunter Shelden.

On the light side of 1956, Elvis Presley burst onto the entertainment scene with a September 9th appearance on "The Ed Sullivan Show;" on April 18, actress Grace Kelly married Prince Rainier III of Monaco; that great device, the TV remote, was invented by Robert Adler who called his ultrasonic device the Zenith Space Command; and on May 13, George D. Maestro registered the Velcro brand for use on products.

Internationally, the world saw the explosion of the Hungarian Revolution on October 23, a revolution against the Soviet-backed Hungarian People's Republic; and on October 29, the Suez Crisis began when Israeli armed forces invaded Egypt over their nationalization of the critical waterway known as the Suez Canal.

The year 1957 is most remembered for the October 4 launch of the Soviet satellite Sputnik, which orbited for three weeks and began the space race and the space age. On March 12, Theodor Geisel (Dr. Seuss) published the children's classic "The Cat in the Hat," selling over one million copies within three years. On March 25, the European Economic Community was established by a treaty signed by representatives of France, West Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Belgium, and Luxembourg.

Memorable moments of 1958 include American Bobby Fischer becoming the youngest chess grandmaster on January 9 at the age of 15. On October 23, Boris Pasternak was awarded a Nobel Prize for Literature, but the Soviet government, which had attempted to ban his novel Doctor Zhivago, forced him to reject it. On July 29, President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed the act establishing the The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). British activist Gerald Holtom designed the peace symbol for the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament.

Hula hoops were invented by Arthur K. "Spud" Melin and Richard Knerr. And another toy that would become a classic was introduced: LEGO toy bricks, pioneered and patented the final shape, even though the right material for the product took another five years to develop.

Internationally, Chinese Leader Mao Tse-tung launched the " Great Leap Forward," a failed five-year economic and social effort that led to millions of deaths and was abandoned by 1961.

On the first day of 1959, Fidel Castro, leader of the Cuban Revolution, became the dictator of Cuba and brought communism to the Caribbean country. The year also saw the famous Kitchen Debate on July 24 between Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev and U.S. Vice President Richard Nixon, one of a series of impromptu discussions between the two. The great fixed quiz show scandals-in which contestants were secretly given assistance by the show producers-were first revealed in 1959, and on November 16, the legendary musical "Sound of Music" opened on Broadway. It would close in June 1961 after 1,443 performances.

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Timeline of the 1950s: The World at Midcentury

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The 1950s were the first full decade after the end of World War II and is remembered as a prosperous time of recovery from the Great Depression of the 1930s and the war years of the 1940s. Everyone collectively breathed a sigh of relief.