ABSTRACT
[In Chapter 32, Robert Leonard, general linguistics editor for this series, wrote, “A constant topic of American ethnic literature will be the tension between the foreign born, and the American born. Sociolinguists can give at least one important reason, from the many available. The foreign born have had their reality organized by a foreign language. The two languages have divided up the world in different ways, organized two separate realities. The clash between these two realities—each looking like no more than “common sense” to the holder—generates the anxiety which, in its turn, generates so much of ethnic American literature. On the very first page of Amy Tan’s The Joy Luck Club, she records an exchange between a foreign mother and an English speaking daughter which prefigures everything she’ll write thereafter:
“Dont show off,” I [the daughter] said.
“It’s not showoff.” She said the two soups were almost the same, chabudwo. Or maybe she said butong, not the same thing at all. It was one of those Chinese expressions that means the better half of mixed intentions. I can never remember things I didn’t understand in the first place. (p. 19)
It’s one thing when a foreigner holds a separate view of reality. It’s another thing when it’s your mother. In that Aristotelian conflict can be found the plots of perhaps the majority of American ethnic literature.”