My Thoughts on "Mother Tongue" by Amy Tan

After reading “Mother Tongue” by Amy Tan, I thought that this text could be relatable for many people who are in a similar “language” situation. The reason I say this is due to how within my own household, most of my family members speak Spanish as their main language while English was their secondary language. Just so that I can communicate with most of family, I use some form of Spanglish which is a combination of words from both the Spanish and English language. This personal life experience is comparable to Amy Tan’s who stated this, “the “simple” English “I spoke to my mother.”” I interpret this statement as Amy Tan using a variation of the English language, just like Spanglish, to communicate with her own mother.

There are even times where people would have to act as translators for their own family members. I am aware that Amy Tan didn’t exactly act as a “translator” in the text but she did take on the role of “grammar checker” for her mother in one instance. This instance was stated in this line, “When I was fifteen, she used to have me call people on the phone to pretend I was her.” In some similar scenarios, I would have to translate English into Spanish for my parents so that they could understand whatever I translated. Overall, I believe that there could many people who can relate to what was written in Amy Tan’s “Mother Tongue.”

My Thoughts on "The Joy of Reading and Writing: Superman and Me” by Sherman Alexie

After reading “The Joy of Reading and Writing: Superman and Me” by Sherman Alexie, I found myself enjoying it. The main reason as to why I experienced this enjoyment came from how the entire text gave the reader insight into the perspective of Sherman Alexie. This perspective of Sherman’s appeared to be how they viewed the world in the form of paragraphs which was stated as “I began to think of everything in terms of paragraphs.” That quote was immediately followed up by examples given by Sherman which I found to be applicable since the concept of paragraphs could be apply to locations, households, and even individual people. With this perspective being introduced in the text, I began to think about how other things could be turned into paragraphs such as objects to buildings.
While Sherman did make the text interesting by bringing up their views on the world, the title of the entire text became somewhat dull to me or at least the “Superman” part of it. What I meant by the title being dull is that the text doesn't exactly focus on how Sherman Alexie learned to read through reading Superman comics. As stated in the text, “I learned to read with a Superman comic book.” I understand that the main purpose of the overall text was to talk about other things relating to “Reading and Writing” but I feel like Sherman could've gone further into his childhood story but he seemingly dismisses it immediately after mentioning it. That feeling came from this sentence, “This might be an interesting story all by itself.” It might not seem like much but I get the feeling that Sherman didn't want to talk about it any more than he did from this sentence.
Anyway that’s about everything I have to say about this text, I enjoy the ideas that were brought up by Sherman Alexie but I do have some gripes with how he did some things.