The essay Tongue-Tied by Maxine Kingston, is about her difficult experience growing up as a Chinese-American female. One of the biggest challenges she faced was learning to speak English to non-Chinese students, while struggling to oppose her Chinese. Her mother stopped her attempt to assimilate fully into American culture. Kingston tried to find a middle ground in which she can live within both the Chinese and the American cultures. While she was doing this, she created her own hybrid identity between the two cultures. While she was going through her identity forming process, she also learned that she has to defend herself by emotionally separating from mother, who has been the center of everything in her life. When she realizes that she is