A literacy narrative requires you to reflect on your level of fluency in a language or communicative medium. For this Literacy Narrative, you are required to reflect on the experiences Amy Tan describ

The talk was g oing alon g well enough, until I r emember ed one major dif feren ce that made the whole talk sound wron g. M y mother was in the room. And it was pe rhaps the first time she had hea rd me give a len gthy spee ch, using the kind of En glish I have never used with he r. I was sayin g th ings like, " The inters ection of memor y upon i magination " and "The re is an asp ect of my fiction that r elates to thus-and- thus'--a speech filled with car efully wrou ght gramm atical phr ases, burd ened, it suddenl y seem ed to me, with nom inalized forms, past pe rfect tenses, conditional phr ases, all the fo rms of standard English that I had learned in school and throu gh books, t he forms of En glish I did not use at home with m y mo ther. Ju st last week, I was walking down the stre et with my m other , and I again found m yself conscious of the En glish I was using, the English I do use with he r. W e wer e talking about the pric e of new and used furnitur e and I hea rd m yself sa yin g t his: "Not waste mone y that wa y." M y husband was with us as well, and he didn 't notice any switch in m y English. And then I realized wh y. I t's bec ause over the twenty y ears we 've be en tog ether I'v e often used that same ;Y9ZEZBYOZCY9YCZ8Y9Z9YOYAZ0ZBZFY5Y9ZDZBYFY5Y9Y5ZBZYYCY9ZZYOZCY9ZFYCZYY0YFgZB> mes he even uses it wi th me. It has become our lang uage of inti macy, a dif ferent sort of En glish that relates to famil y talk, the lan guage I g re w up with. So y ou'll have some ide a of what this famil y talk I heard sounds l ike, I'1 1 quote what my m other said durin g a rec ent conve rsation which I videotaped and then trans cribed. During this conv ersation, m y mother was talking about a poli tical gangster in Shang hai who had the same last name as her family 's , Du, and how the g angste r in his earl y y ears wanted to be adopted by her famil y, which was rich by comparison. L ate r, the g angste r became more powe rful, far rich er than my m other 's famil y, and one da y showed up at my mother 's wedding to pay his respe cts. Here's wh at she said in part: " Du Yusong having business like fruit stand. L ike of f the street kind. He is Du like Du Zong -- but not Tsun g-ming Isl and people. The loc al people c all pu tong, the river e ast side, he belon g t o that side local people. That man want to ask Du Zong father take him in like becom e own family . Du Z ong father wasn't look down on hi m, but didn't take seriousl y, until t hat man big like be come a mafia. Now important person, ve ry hard to inviting him. Chinese w ay, c ame onl y to show resp ect, don't stay fo r dinner . Respect for makin g big celeb ration, he shows up. Mean g ives lots of resp ect. Chinese custom. Chinese soci al l ife that wa y. I f too i mportant won 't have to sta y too lon g. He come to m y weddin g. I didn 't see, I he ard it. I gone to bo y's s ide, the y have YMCA dinne r. Chinese a ge I was nineteen. " Y ou should know that m y mother 's expressive command of En glish belies how much she actually unde rstands. She re ads the Forbes report, listens to Wall Street Week, convers es daily with her stockb roker, r eads all of Shirle y Mac Lain e's books with ease --all kinds of things I can 't begin to understand. Yet some of m y fri ends tell me the y understand 50 percent of what m y mo ther sa ys. S ome sa y the y underst and 80 to 90 pe rcent. Some sa y the y underst and none of it, as if she we re speaking pure Chinese. But to me, m y mother' s En glish i s perfectly cle ar, pe rfectly natural. It's m y m other tongue. Her lang uage, as I hear it, is viv id, dire ct, full of observ ation and imagery. That was the language t hat helped shape the way I saw things, expressed thin gs, made sense of the world. L atel y, I 've been givin g more thought to the kind of En glish my mo ther speaks. Like others, I have des cribed it to people as 'broken" or "fractu red" English. But I wince when I say that. I t has alw ay s bother ed me that I can think of no wa y to describ e it other than " broken, " as if it wer e damaged and ne eded to be fixed, as if it lacked a certain wholen ess and soundness. I've he ard othe r terms used, "limited En glish," for example. But the y seem just as bad, as if every thing is lim ited, includin g people 's perc eptions of the limited English spe aker. I know th is for a fact, be cause when I was g rowing up, m y m other 's "limi ted" English li mited my pe rception of her. I was ashamed of her English. I believed that he r English refle cted the quality of what she had to sa y That is, be cause she expressed them imper fectl y her thou ghts were imperfect. And I had plent y of empirical eviden ce to support me: the fact that people in department stores, at banks, and at r estaurants did not take her seriously , did not give her good service, pretended not to understand he r, or ev en act ed as if the y did no t hear her . M y mother has long realized the lim itations of her English as well. When I was fifteen, she used to hav e me c all people on the phone to pretend I was she. In thi s guise, I was fo rced to ask for info rmation or even to complain and yell at people who had be en rude to her. One time it was a call to her stockbrok er in N ew Y ork. She had c ashed out her small portfol io and it just so happen ed we were going to go to N ew York the nex t week, our ver y first trip ou tside California. I had to g et on t he phone and say in an adoles cent voice that was not very convin cing, "This is Mrs. Tan. " And my mother was standing in the back whispering loudly, "Wh y he don 't send me check, already two we eks late. So mad he lie to me, losin g me mone y. And then I said in perf ect English, " Yes, I 'm gettin g rather con cerned. You had a greed to send the ch eck two we eks ago, but it hasn' t arrived." Then she be gan to talk m ore loudl y. "What he want, I come to Ne w York tell h im front of his bo ss, you ch eatin g me?" And I was tr ying to calm her down, make her be quiet, while tell ing the stockbrok er, " I can 't tolerat e any m ore excuses. I f I don 't receive the che ck immediately, I am g oing to have to speak to your mana ger when I 'm in Ne w York next we ek." And sure enou gh, the following week there we w ere in front of this astoni shed stockbroke r, and I was sitt ing ther e red-faced and quiet, and my m other , the re al Mrs. Tan, was shout ing at his boss in her impec cable broken English. W e used a similar routine jus t five days a go, for a situation that was far less hu morous. My mo ther had g one to the hosp ital for ;Y9ZZYOY9ZZZBZBYCZBYOYFZYY0YOYFYCY9YFYCY9Z8ZBYOZCY9YCYBYFY9ZZYDYCYBYFY9ZZgY9YDY0YOZB> gn brain tu mor a CA T sc an had r evealed a month ag o. She said she had spoken ve ry g ood En glish, her best English, no mis takes. St ill, she said, the hospital did no t apologize when they said the y had los t the CAT scan and she had come for nothing. She said the y d id not seem to hav e any s ymp athy when she told t hem she was anxiou s to know the exact dia gnosis, since her husband and son had both died of brain tumors. She said the y would not giv e her any more information unt il the next time and she would have to mak e another appointment for that. So she said she would no t leave until t he doctor c alled her daughter. She wouldn 't budge. And when the doctor finall y c alled her daughter, me, who spoke in per fect English - - lo and behold - - we had assur ances the CA T scan would be found, promises that a con ferenc e call on M onday would be held, and apologies for any s uf fering m y mother had gone throu gh for a most re grettable mistake. I t hink m y mother' s English almos t had an effe ct on l imiting m y possibi lities in l ife as w ell. Sociolo gists and lin guists probabl y will tel l you t hat a person 's developing language sk ills ar e more influen ced by peers. But I do think t hat the language spoken in t he famil y, especiall y i n imm igr ant families which a re more insular , plays a lar ge role in shapin g t he langu age of the child. And I believe that it aff ected my results on a chievement tests, I .Q. tests, and the SA T. W hile m y En glish sk ills were never judged as poor , compa red to math, En glish could not be consider ed my strong suit. In gr ade school I did moder ately well, g etting pe rhaps B 's, someti mes B-pluses, in En glish and scorin g perhaps in the six tieth or sev entieth perc entile on a chievement tests. B ut tho se scores were not g ood enou gh to over ride the opinion that m y true abilities la y in math and scien ce, becaus e in those ar eas I achiev ed A's and sco red in the ninetieth pe rcentile or high er. This was understandabl e. Math is precis e; there is onl y one corr ect answ er. Where as, for me at least, the answ ers on English tests wer e alway s a jud gment c all, a matter of opinion and personal experien ce. Those tests we re constru cted around items l ike fill-in- the -blank senten ce completion, s uch as, " Even thou gh Tom was, Mar y t hou ght he was --." And the correct answ er alwa ys seemed to be the mo st bland combinations of thou ghts, for example, " Even though Tom was shy, Ma ry thought he was charmin g:' with the g rammatical structur e "even though " limiting the cor rect answe r to some sort of semantic opposites, so y ou wouldn't g et answ ers like, " Even though T om was foolish, Mar y t hou ght he was ridiculous:' W ell, a ccordin g t o m y mother , t he re w ere ver y few limitat ions as to wh at Tom could have been and what Mary might have thou ght of him. S o I never did w ell on tes ts like that The same was true with word analogies, pairs of words in which you wer e supposed to find some sort of lo gical, semantic relationship -- for example, "Sunset is to nightf all as is to ." And her e you would be pr esented with a list of four possible pairs, one of which showed the same kind of relationship: red is to stopl ight, bus is to arrival, chills is to feve r, y awn is t o borin g: Well, I could neve r think that wa y. I kne w what the tests wer e asking, but I could not block out of m y mind the i mages alr eady cre ated b y t he first pair , "sunset is to nightf all"--and I would see a burst of colors against a darkenin g s ky, the moon rising, the lowe ring of a curtain of stars. And all t he othe r pairs of words - -red, bus, s toplight, boring--just threw up a mass of confusing images, makin g it impossible for me to sort ou t something as logical as sayin g: "A sunset pr ecedes night fall" is the same as " a chil l preced es a feve r." The onl y wa y I would hav e gotten that answ er right would hav e been to i magine an asso ciative situat ion, for examp le, m y being disobedient and sta ying out past sunset, cat ching a chill at night, which turns into feve rish pneumonia as punishment, which indeed did happen to me. I have be en thinking about all this lately, about m y mo ther's En glish, about achiev ement tests. Because latel y I 've be en asked, as a writer , why there are not m ore Asian Americans represented in Americ an literatur e. Wh y ar e ther e few As ian Ame ricans enrolled in cr eative writing pro grams ? W hy do so man y Chinese students g o into engineering ! W ell, t hese ar e bro ad sociologi cal questions I can't beg in to answe r. But I have noticed in surve ys -- in fa ct, just las t week - - that Asian students, as a whole, always do signi ficantl y better on math achiev ement tests than in English. And this makes me think that the re are othe r Asian- Americ an students whose English spoken in the home might also be des cribed as "broken" or "limited." And perh aps they also hav e teachers who ar e steering them awa y from w riting and into math and scien ce, which is what happen ed to me. Fo rtunatel y, I happ en to be r ebellious i n nature and enjoy the ch allenge of disprovin g assump tions made about me.

I bec ame an English major my first y ear in colleg e, after being enrolled as pre-med. I started writin g nonfiction as a freelanc er the week after I was told b y m y former boss that writ ing w as m y worst skil l and I should hone m y talents toward account mana gement. But it wasn 't un til 1985 that I finally be gan to write fiction. And at first I wrote using what I thought to be witti ly c raft ed senten ces, senten ces that would finall y prove I had master y over the English lan guage. He re's an examp le from the first dr aft of a stor y that later made its wa y i nto The Joy L uc k Club, but wi thout this l ine: " That w as my mental quanda ry in its nascent state. " A terrible line, which I c an bar ely pronounc e. Fo rtunatel y, for reasons I won't get into t oday, I later de cided I should envision a reader for the stories I would write.

And the read er I decided upon was my mother , becaus e these were stories about mothers. So with thi s read er in mind -- and in f act she did r ead my earl y drafts- -I be gan to write stories usin g all the En glishes I gre w up with: the En glish I spoke to m y mo ther, which for lack of a better term might be des cribed as "simple"; the English she used with me, which for lack of a better term might be described as " broken "; my translation of her Chinese, which could c ertainly be described as "wate red down"; and what I imagin ed to be her translation of her Chinese if she could speak in perfect English, her intern al lan guage, and for that I sought to pres erve the essen ce, bu t neither an English nor a Chinese stru cture. I wanted to c apture what lan guage abili ty tes ts c an nev er reveal: he r intent, her passion, her imag ery, t he rh ythms of her spe ech and the nature of her thoughts. Apa rt from wh at any c rit ic had to sa y about m y writ ing, I knew I had succ eeded whe re it counted when my mother finished readin g m y book and ga ve me her verdict: "So easy to re ad."