Assimilation and the Loss of Cultural Background
By Halle Hazzard
In the individual works of Amy Tan and Eric Liu, both authors use personal narratives in
order to reflect on the idea of assimilation and express how it has affected their perspectives of
their cultural background. In her piece, “Mother Tongue”,Tan talks about how her writing is
strengthened due to the variety of languages uses, and the acceptance of her cultural background, as
well as the one she had to assimilate to. Conversely in “Notes of a Native Speaker”, Liu reveals that
the assimilation to White Culture has led to loss of his Chinese identity, making it difficult to find
himself within American society. With both authors sharing Chinese backgrounds, each is able to
convey their own personal experiences to the reader, allowing them to express the struggle of having
a diverse background, while being pressured to integrate themselves into white society.
The purpose of this paper is to come to terms with the personal narratives of Amy Tan
and Eric Liu in order to inform the audience of the difficulties that come along with being a first
generation American. Since the authors have opposing views on assimilation, I am going to
rhetorically analyze and come to terms with both of their works respectively. I will theorize as to
why and how their experiences have shaped their perspectives and examine the similarities and
differences of each narrative. I will then talk about my own personal experience by coming to terms
and forwarding the works of Tan and Liu. I am going to talk about my Caribbean background and
the schools I went to that unintentionally made me assimilate to White Culture. By assessing these
different narrations, my intended audience will be first generation Americans like myself, as well as
people who struggle to understand the difficulty of having to assimilate to White Culture.
In the piece “Mother Tongue”, Tan stresses how the influence of multiple cultures and
languages has helped her to become a better writer. She does this by using the rhetorical situation of
a personal narrative, allowing the audience to experience the thoughts and memories that led her to
believe this. In the introduction of Tan’s piece, she expresses her love for languages when she says,
“I spend a great deal of my time thinking about the power of language — the way it can evoke
emotion, a visual image, a complex idea, or a simple truth” (417). The reader is able to witness her
passion for languages due to this first hand opinion. Tan notices that there is a difference in her
diction when talking to groups of people about her novel, and when talking with her mother who is a
Chinese immigrant. She observes the difference in her terminology when she says, “There is an
aspect of my fiction that relates to thus-and-thus— a speech filled with carefully wrought
grammatical phrases, burdened, it suddenly seemed to me, with normalized forms, past perfect
tenses, conditional phrases, all the forms of standard English I did not use at home with my mother”
(418). She wonders why she feels the need to change her tongue when speaking to an American
crowd, and looks for the answer by analyzing a videotaped conversation of her mother speaking. In
the recording, her mother talks about a political gangster in Shanghai and says, “Du Yusong having
business like fruit stand. Like off the street kind. He is Du like Du Zong — but not Tsung-ming
Island people” (419). By giving an example of how her mother speaks, Tan is showing the reader the
difference in tongues between her Chinese mother and American culture.
For Tan, this form of speaking is what she referred to as “family talk”, but to Americans it
is known as “broken” or“fractured” English. Tan admits to describing her mother’s tongue as
this, but does not define her intelligence by the way she speaks. She reveals this when she says
“You should know that my mother’s expressive command of English belies how much she
actually understands. She reads Forbes Report, listens to Wall Street Weekly, converses with
her daily stockbroker, reads all of Shirley MacLaine’s books with ease— all kinds of things I
can’t begin to understand” (419). This gives the reader insight on to how much the mother’s
intelligence is underestimated due to her foreign tongue. Tan further explains how society
downplays her mother’s understanding of the English language when she says, “I’ve heard
other terms used, limited English for example. But they seem just as bad as if everything is
limited, including people’s perception of the limited English speaker” (419). Tan does not view
her mother the same way American culture does because she is aware that her mother is more
than capable of understanding the English language. In the conclusion of her text, she
discloses that as a novelist, she will start picturing the reader she is writing to, and gear her
rhetoric towards them. She does this by writing a story in her mother’s tongue so that it will be
easier for her mother to read. When the mother reads the work, she describes it as easy to
read. Revealing the purpose of her piece, Tan concludes “I wanted to capture what language
ability tests can never reveal: her intent, her passion, her imagery, the rhythms of her speech,
and the nature of her thoughts” (423). With the ability to go back and forth between American
language and her mother’s foreign tongue, Tan is able to show that her assimilation to American
culture has made her into a better writer. She is able to understand both Chinese and American
tongues, allowing her to broaden her audience in her novels. By viewing the mother’s struggle
to adjust to American language, the reader is able to see why Tan views assimilation as positive.
By assimilating, Tan is able to become a bridge between her mother tongue, and the American
language. Only by embracing her mother tongue is Tan able to assimilate without losing her
cultural background or identity.
Unlike Amy Tan, Eric Liu has a negative view on the idea of assimilation. In his piece
“Notes of a Native Speaker”,Liu talks about the struggles he had growing up due to the racial
and cultural divides of this country by revealing his experience of unconsciously assimilating to
white culture. He uses personal narrative in order to show the reader how assimilation led to
the loss of his Chinese identity. Liu introduces his work in a way that is meant to immediately
capture the reader’s attention. He simply lists ways in which people could say they are “white”
by providing the following examples:
I listen to National Public Radio.
I wear khaki Dockers.
I own brown suede bucks.
I eat gourmet greens.
I have few close friends "of color."
I married a white woman.
I am a child of the suburbs (1).
Rhetorically, this allows Liu to build a connection with his audience because these stereotypes
can be very relatable if the reader is able to agree with the ones listed above. Liu uses this
introduction to present the reasoning as to why he lost his Chinese identity amidst White
Culture. By doing so, he is able to introduce the status that most first generation Americans find
themselves getting sucked into. He introduces this when he says, “But like so many other Asian
Americans of the second generation, I find myself now the bearer of a strange new status:
white, by acclamation” (1). Once again, Liu is able to connect with the reader through this line
because since this piece is geared toward first generation Americans, this audience will be able
to easily come to terms with what he is saying. They then will be able to either forward or
counter his claims. Before giving reasoning as to why he has negative views of assimilation, Liu
rephrases the term by describing it as “Both the honorific and the epithet take as a given this
idea: To the extent that I have moved away from the periphery and toward the center of
American life, I have become white inside. Some are born white, others achieve whiteness, still
others have whiteness thrust upon them. This, supposedly, is what it means to assimilate” (1).
By defining assimilation, the audience is able to get an idea of what Liu had to undergo growing
up. When telling his story, Liu points out that he did not have trouble assimilating until he got
into middle school. Prior to this, Liu admits to paying more attention to himself than to the
people around him when he says, “I was not bicultural but omnicultural, and omnivorous, too. To
my mind, I differed from others in only two ways that counted: I was a faster runner than most,
and a better student. Thus did work blend happily with play, school with home, Western culture
with Eastern: It was all the same to a self-confident boy who believed he'd always be at the
center of his own universe” (4). However, when he reached ages of adolescence, things did not
stay this simple. Liu reveals his struggle when he says, “Now I had to contend with the unstated,
inchoate, but inescapable standards of cool. The essence of cool was the ability to conform. The
essence of conformity was the ability to anticipate what was cool. And I wasn't so good at that”
(4). He realized that in order to be cool, he had to assimilate. However, this made him
self-conscious because he had reached an age where no matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t
assimilate due to the Asian genes that reflected his physical appearance.
In order to express his inability to assimilate, Liu recalls upon a memory he had of trying
to style his hair as a teenager. In this memory, he tries to get his hair to look like the white boys
at his school. He ends up with the opposite result when he says, “Instead, I was cursed. My hair
was straight, rigid and wiry. Not only did it fail to feather back; it would not even bend. Worse
still, it grew the wrong way. That is, it all emanated from a single swirl near the rear edge of my
scalp” (5). This failed attempt to assimilate adds to his self-consciousness, but Liu continues to
try to assimilate to White Culture because he feels the need to fit in. That is until one day he
shaves his head due to the frustration of not being able to get his hair the way he wants. “My
salvation didn't come until the end of junior high, when one of my buddies, in an epiphany as we
walked past the Palace of Hair Design, dared me to get my head shaved. Without hesitation, I
did it -- to the tearful laughter of my friends and, soon afterward, the tearful horror of my mother”
(6). This personal experience is able to express the self-consciousness that rested inside
Liu as a teenager. By going as far as shaving his head, the reader witnesses how badly Liu
wanted to fit in with the crowd. However, as he leaves his college year, Liu comes to a
conclusion when he says, “The irony is that in working so duteously to defy stereotype, I
became a slave to it. For to act self-consciously against Asian tendencies is not to break loose
from the cage of myth and legend; it is to turn the very key that locks you inside” (8). Ultimately,
he realizes that he became a slave to his stereotype, by trying to defy his stereotype.
Personally, I believe that the negativeness that surrounds assimilation would have never
touched Liu if he wasn’t so concerned with fitting in. The personal narrative allows the reader to
notices this, thus giving them the answer as to why Liu views assimilation as something
negative.
After rhetorically analyzing and coming to terms with the works of Amy Tan and Eric
Liu, I am inspired to write my own personal narrative on this subject. Since my parents are
immigrants and I am of a Caribbean background, I was able to relate to a lot of the things said in
the pieces, “Mother Tongue” and “Notes of a Native Speaker”. Throughout my life, I have
experienced the pressures of assimilation, and like Eric Liu, I have often found myself giving
into them. Like Amy Tan, I have noticed that the way I speak is different from my parents. I have
also noticed how society does not always take my parents seriously due to their foreign accents.
The personal narratives of these authors allowed me to realize that I’m not alone when it comes
to the struggles of being a first generation American.
As a child, I was oblivious to my Caribbean background. I simply went to school,
played with my friends, went to gymnastics practice, and then went home. When I reached
home, I would either be welcomed by an American meal such as chicken and mashed potatoes,
or a Caribbean meal such as curry goat and rice. I remember in first grade when my friends
were talking about what they had for dinner last night. They all said American meals such as
Mac and cheese, pot roast, or chicken and rice. When it got to my turn, I named a Caribbean
meal I had eaten for dinner, but was only greeted with confusion and gross reactions. After that, I
eventually learned to just lie and say I had a simple American meal. As I grew older, I became
more aware that I will get these reactions when referring to my Caribbean background, so like
Liu, I made a conscious decision to hide it. However, my background was not easy to hide,
especially when my friends would hear my mom speak. In Amy Tan’s piece “Mother
Tongue”, she stresses how she was ashamed of her mother’s English. She says, “I was
ashamed of her English. I believe that her English reflected the quality of what she had to
say” (419). I felt the same way when my school friends told me my mother talks differently. Prior
to this, I did not even realize my mother had an accent because I was so used to hearing it
everyday. When they told me this, I felt embarrassed. It made me feel like something was wrong
with the way she spoke, all because it wasn’t like how their parents spoke. That is why I could
agree with Tan in this aspect. Especially when she says, “But I do not 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 421). I agree with this because your accent is
influenced by the environment you’re in the most. Growing up, I was constantly in school,
surrounded by kids with American accents, so I caught onto their accents more than my
parents. However, this environment made it difficult to accept and embrace my Caribbean
background.
In Eric Liu’s “Notes of a Native Speaker”, I was able to strongly relate and forward his
definition of assimilation. In his piece, he describes the assimilationist as “a traitor to his kind, to his
class, to his own family. He cannot gain the world without losing his soul” (2). I agree with this
because throughout high school, some of my African American friends have called me out for
living in a white suburban neighborhood instead of a black one. They have even questioned as
to why I speak “flawless, unaccented English” according to Liu. I find it difficult to provide
answers to these questions because like him, “My own assimilation began long before I was
born. It began with my parents, who came here with an appetite for Western ways” (2). I was
essentially brought into this world of white culture that I had no choice but to adapt to. I was
strongly able to forward Liu’s words when he says, “My parents, who traded Chinese formality
for the more relaxed stance of this country. Who made their way by hard work and quiet
adaptation. Who fashioned a comfortable life in a quiet development in a second-tier suburb.”
My parents did not trade their Caribbean traditions, but by making me and my two older siblings
assimilate to White Culture, unintentionally made us push our Caribbean background away.
When I was in high school, I used to overhear my mom talking to my aunt about how her friends
at work questioned why she lives in a white neighborhood. They would ask, “Pauline why do you
live in Commack? Wouldn’t you rather live with your own kind?” One day I brought this topic up
to my mom, wondering why she chose to live in this neighborhood. Consequently, she had the
same view of assimilation as Amy Tan does when it comes to languages and cultures. She told
me that it’s good to surround yourself with people who look different from you. This way you can
learn from them, and pick up on different perspectives and cultures other than your own.
Growing up, I did not understand this as yet so I often ignored my background in order to fit in.
Now I know that my assimilation was never a bad thing. It made me into the person I am today,
and has led me to appreciate myself for my cultural background, and for who I am.
In their works respectively, Amy Tan and Eric Liu share similar rhetorical situations of
personal narratives in which both authors express the struggle of living in American society with
a diverse cultural background. By using personal narratives to inform the readers of their
struggles, they are able to further connect with their audience, despite having opposing views of
assimilation. In “Notes of a Native Speaker”, Liu’s narratives lets first generation Americans
know that they are not alone in this trial against assimilation. Since he did not embrace his
Chinese heritage, Liu lost his Chinese identity, which essentially led him to losing his identity.
His piece is able to inform his audience of this personal experience in the hopes that the reader
will avoid this confusion growing up. Amy Tan shares her experience for a similar reason in
“Mother Tongue” by concluding that the act of assimilation has allowed her to broaden her
audience in her writing. Through viewing their narratives, one is able to come to terms with how
these authors developed their perspectives. By comparing and contrasting their works, it was
easy to create my own personal narration. It shows that the problems these authors talk
about are real, and that people like myself deal with them everyday.
Author’s Note
When reading “Mother Tongue”by Amy Tan and “Notes of aNative Speaker”by Eric Liu,
I was able to strongly relate to their experiences. That is why my audience is other first
generation Americans like myself. By writing to this audience, I am letting them know that they
are not alone when it comes to the struggle of having a cultural background in a predominantly
white society. The purpose of this paper was to come to terms with the personal narratives of
Amy Tan and Eric Liu. By doing this I was able to evaluate the difficulty of being a first
generation American. I had to come to terms with these struggles myself, so I was able to come
to terms and forward what the authors were saying. I was able to agree with both of their
perspectives through the evaluation of my own. Writing my own personal narrative was an eye
opener for me because I had never gotten a chance to express my feelings on this topic, which
is odd considering this was such a huge part of my life growing up. These experiences shaped
me into the person I am today, so being able to talk about it is amazing, and even relieving. The
works of Tan and Liu inspired me to do so because I related to their works so much that I felt I
had to tell my own story as well. My question for the reader would be, do you have a cultural
background that you’re embarrassed of or afraid to share with your peers?