"Mother Tongue" by Amy Tan is about a woman whose mother is originally from China. English is not her mother's native language and that plays a very big role in her life.
A few paragraphs in, Tan includes a direct quotation from the foreign tongue of her mother. By doing this, se is able to show the reader the lack of "strength" of her mother's English. If she were to paraphrase instead, the whole idea of her essay would have been weakened. The literal example helps us to realize that her mother really was a poor English speaker, and that must have truly made it hard on the family.
Tan then switches the blame around and criticizes herself for using "carefully wrought grammatical phrases, burdened... with nominalized forms, past perfect tenses, conditional phrases...". She wants us to know that she feels she must use all of those to be the most perfect professional writer. If someone were to tell us that they were an author or journalist then we would most likely expect to see words and phrases that are so meticulously thought up and produced. She then goes on to say how much she enjoys speaking in the most simplest terms, not only for just her mother. Even with her own husband she does not seem to use such intense language. The process she goes through to write for the average American is not normal for her and she is not completely comfortable with having to be so many different people to please everyone.
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