Mother Tongue 'And Leave Your Name At The Border'

Comparative Essay
Munoz and Tan both describe the challenges that having immigrant parents can have in different ways. Both writers describe the effects of assimilation between two cultures. However, in her essay “Mother Tongue”, Amy Tan’s audience is the immigrants in the United States. Whereas, Manuel Munoz’s audience are all Americans, especially whites in his essay, “Leave Your Name at the Border”.
Munoz conquers the problem that assimilation causes through describing the coalesce of Spanish name in American culture. Munoz believes that assimilation has caused Hispanic Americans to become more and more Americanized by ignoring their culture. He uses names as an example of this to show how Hispanics who grew up in America changed their names to more Americanized names to avoid embarrassment and questions concerning their name. Munoz gives an example of how people in Dublin redundantly used to mispronounce Spanish names by saying with an English connotation and then there would be series of follow up questions about the meaning of the name in English. Therefore, to avoid this embarrassment Hispanics change their name to a more American sounding name according to Munoz. Although Munoz mostly talks about
On the one hand, Manuel Munoz’s “Leave Your Name at the Border” describes how he felt like a Spanish dictionary for whites wherever they would attempt to say his name. Through his essay, Munoz wants to make Americans realize how wrong it is that they are adjusting foreign names to make it more convenient and “Americanized” so, it is easier for them to pronounce it. Manuel talks about the embarrassment that most Hispanic Americans face as a result of having a traditional Hispanic name. His elaboration of this claim through his personal anecdotes help his audience visualize the situation and feel sympathy for him so, they can see how ridiculous the problem