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?