Mother Tongue Stereotypes

In “Mother Tongue” by Amy Tan, Stereotypes play a big role as the author and her mother are heavily influenced by it. As they are Chinese and live in America, many people have preconceptions of them as they tend to generalise Asians. This is clearly seen in the text as people believe in the stereotype that all Asians are good in math and science.  Due to this Amy Tan was unable to “override the opinion that [her] true abilities lay in math and science”. Being German, I receive stereotypical comments as well, which range from loving football, drinking beer to hating Jews due to the Nazism ideology which used to rule Germany. And No, I don't think Hitler was a good man (I get asked that question from time to time). Even though some stereotypes might be correct, such as loving football, most of the stereotypes are incorrect, such as hating Jews, and are brought upon Germans due to the media as well as due to the German History (Nazism Ideology). Stereotypes are often imposed on people due to the media, which often are not true. In “Mother Tongue”, Amy Tan writes about the stereotypes of non-native English speaker. I personally believe that we should not have a pre-assumption of what a person is like by only knowing their nationality or the way they look like by using stereotypes. Furthermore, these stereotypes are often incorrect like I stated earlier, for example, not all French people love wine and baguette. The issue of stereotypes greatly effects Amy Tan as well as her mother. This is seen when Mrs. Tan is not been treated correctly when the hospital lost her CAT scan of her Brain tumor, and were not willing to provide a justification or explanation of how they lost, let alone a apology. This is because the hospital thought less of her as she was unable to communicate effectively with the staff at the hospital. This however is changed when the doctor, who speaks perfect english, calls Mrs. Tan’s daughter, Amy Tan, due to her requesting it as Amy Tan is able to speak english better which is not ”broken english”, unlike Mrs. Tan’s English. The doctor called Amy Tan, and assured her that the CAT scans would be found, promising that they would have a conference call on Monday, as well as apologising for any suffering that her mother had had to go through. This is a perfect example of how people think less of others if they are not able to fly speak their language. If Mrs. Tan would have been able to speak “perfect English”, she would have gotten most definitely apology, like Amy Tan got when she talked to the Doctor. Due to this, I believe that people should stop making assumptions based on stereotypes.