Sinisgalli 1

Angel Sinisgalli
Professor Altman
English 101
4 November 2015
Progression 2, Exercise 1
Theres a story about the power of language and then theres a story about food
connecting with ones culture. The language you speak with friends is going to be different than
the language you speak at home with family. The food you eat can connect you with your culture
and educate you as well. These two stories are very different, but theyre also both about a
connection. The emotion you feel when you connect with your culture and the emotion you feel
when you speak different languages throughout your life. Both of these authors are not
American, theyre influenced by their mothers, and have a connection to their culture.
The American way of eating, writing, or even speaking isnt natural to someone who isnt
born in America. I want to eat what the kids at school eat: bologna, hot dogs, salami, foods my
parents find repugnant because they contain pork and meat byproducts, crushed bone and hair
glued together by chemicals and fat. Although she has never been able to tolerate the smell of
fish, my mother buys the tuna, hoping to satisfy my longing for American food (Kothari, 922).
Being around peers who are Americanized and are eating foods you dont recognize or normally
eat can make you curious what its like to live that lifestyle. Kotharis diet changed within her
life as she grew older and started to miss her cultures food (925). Living the American way also
means speaking the American way, and for Tans mother that was hard to do. A speech filled
with carefully wrought grammatical phrases, burdened, it suddenly seemed to me, with
nominalized forms, past perfect tenses, conditional phrases, all the forms of standard English that

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I had learned in school and through books, the forms of English I did not use at home with my
mother (Tan, 633). Tans way of learning English and exploring languages teaches her to write a
book that is understandable in multiple languages, in which her mother finds very easy to read
(639).
Our mothers guide and influence us growing up, and being young in a new country can
be very confusing if you dont know wrong from right. There is so much my parents dont
know. They are not like other parents, and they disappoint me and my sister. They are supposed
to help us negotiate the world outside, teach us the signs, the clues to proper behavior: what to
eat and how to eat it (Kothari, 923). Kotharis parents work full-time and forget the importance
of their childrens knowledge in America. Children solely depend on their parents to show them
the way of living, eating, speaking, growing, and learning. I do think that the language spoken
in the family, especially in immigrant families which are more insular, plays a large role in
shaping the language of the child (Tan, 636). Tans mother didnt teach her how to learn proper
English or influence her in school, but that didnt stop her from being an English major.
India and China are two completely different cultures outside of America, and theyre
both very far. Theyre also very different cultures, and the way they eat or learn could be the
complete opposite of the way another culture may do the same things. But I have noticed in
surveys, that Asian students, as a whole, always do significantly better on math achievement tests
than in English (Tan, 638). A stereotype that Americans claim is true, and it may or may not be,
but Tan didnt let that survey stop her from writing. She didnt score very well on achievement
test, and she claims I think my mothers English almost had an effect on limiting my
possibilities in life as well (Tan, 636). She would score low grades in America, but higher
grades in China. This wasnt the case for Kothari, because she wanted to be Americanized, she

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had forgotten all about her own cultures food. Indians eat lentils. I understand this as absolute, a
decree from an unidentifiable authority that watches and judges me (Kothari, 926). The way she
eats Indian food or American food is her own way of remembering her culture and the way her
mom cooked her meals as a child.
In conclusion, these authors both have their own ways of coming from another country
and learning the American way. Secondly, they learn everything they know by the influence of
their mothers having such a big impact on their lives. Lastly, they connect to their cultures in
their own way, and show that no one can judge them for following their heart. The way they
were influenced growing up was both so differently, but in some ways the same. Tan learns how
to speak different languages, including the one her mother speaks. Kothari relates food to her
culture, and connects it with her own education and emotions.

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Works Cited
Kothari, Geeta. If You Are What You Eat, Then What Am I? Pittsburg: Reflection, 1999. Print.
Tan, Amy. Mother Tongue. San Francisco: 1989. Print.