Mother Tongue (Summary)

Tara Link

English 1010

Haley Stokes

1/15/10

Mother Tongue (Summary)

This story is about a young Chinese-American, who grows up speaking Chinese and English (many different forms of English). She talks about how not being able to speak english can create some real difficulties. She tells stories about how her mother spoke, what she calls “broken” english, and how it affected her everyday life, as well as her daughters. At first she was ashamed of her mothers english, and that if reflected the quality of what her mother was trying to say. Towards the end of the story I feel like her attitude changes, and she becomes inspired by her mother, and started writing things not in english, or chinese per-say, but in a way that showed passion, imagery, the rhythms of her mothers speech, and the nature of her mothers thoughts. She knew she had succeeded when her mother finished reading the book and said “So easy to read.”