Comparing Amy Tan’s Mother Tongue and How It Feels to Be Colored Me by Zora Neale Hurston
From the assigned readings this week, I decided to compare “Mother Tongue” by Amy Tan and “How It Feels to Be Colored Me” by Zora Neale Hurston because I felt identified with them the most.
In “Mother Tongue, ” Amy Tan notes that she uses different versions of English depending who she is communicating with—from standard English to ‘broken’ or ‘limited’ English. She discusses the reality many immigrants face due to the language barrier and how this sets them for discrimination. She points out the racism her mother had suffered for speaking a ‘broken’ language. She asserts that language is embedded in one’s culture and identity. She understands her mother’s language completely because it shaped her as she grew up.
I personally feel identified with this, because my father also speaks “broken” English and I have seen countless times how he has been discriminated. Just like Tan, I have become aware of how I switch my language, especially when I communicate with my father. This author shows great examples of how people become judgmental based on the language another person speaks. As many other writers we have studied this semester, Tan also sees language as a powerful tool.
In “How It Feels to Be Colored Me, ” Zora Hurston begins her essay with memories of her childhood in Eatonville. She recalls how white tourists would pay her to sing and dance as they went across town. It was not until she moved from a “colored town, ” that she discovers the many cultural differences between her ‘colored’ self and Americans. She realizes the impact culture affects how people act and behave. I personally enjoyed reading her because, although she lived in a time where racism was still present, her positivism is conveyed in her writing.
Personally, Hurston gives me a different perspective of her life. I was raised in a small Nicaraguan town where I was the only Asian, so I felt I was often treated differently than most, as a foreigner, but I never saw that as a negative matter. Similarly, Amy Tan and Zora Neale Hurston share their personal experiences in a very emotional way, making it easier for their readers to feel empathy and see clearly their worlds from their perspectives. They embraced their cultures loud and proud. Both writers found their own identities as they try to fit in the societies they lived in and encourage people to find their own.
