Amy Tan Fish Cheeks Essay

During the Christmas dinner, Amy finds herself ashamed of how different she is, though her parents view their culture as normal and think it makes their daughter unique. Despite the way her parents embrace their culture, Amy is unable to overlook how far she is from her standards of a normal American girl. With the news that her parents had invited over the minister’s family for Christmas eve dinner, Amy discovers a newfound embarrassment in her culture, brought on by her fear of how Robert, the minister’s son and the boy she loves, will see her culture. Amy begins to see things how she assumes Robert will view her culture, and becomes judgmental and uncomfortable with her relatives’ behavior. What once were her favorite foods suddenly seemed so gross that Amy couldn’t imagine why anyone would willingly eat them. Tan’s contrast of the different perspectives on the Christmas dinner reveals Amy’s feeling of shame and her indifference to the rest of her family’s pride in their culture.

Teenagers usually have a distorted perspective which differs from an adult’s causing teens to be self-centered rather than other-centered, this story explores that view and how the teen in the story was able to change. “Fish Cheeks,” by Amy Tan, is an autobiographical narrative following fourteen year old Amy Tan and her experience at a Christmas Eve dinner after her father invites the minister and his son, Robert, who was Amy’s crush at the time. As I was reading the story I was able to learn how Amy went from being self-centered to other-centered causing her to fully appreciate her mother’s lesson, and some of the ways I could improve myself based on Amy’s situation.

It is about an event that occurred in her life at the age of fourteen. Amy had a crush on the minister's son, Robert. On Christmas Eve, she found out that her parents invited Robert and his family over for dinner. “What would Robert think of our shabby Chinese Christmas? What would he think of our noisy Chinese relatives who lacked proper American manners? What terrible disappointment would he feel upon seeing not a roasted turkey and sweet potatoes but Chinese food?” (Fish Cheeks 1). Amy was not only extremely nervous about Robert coming over to her house, but she was ashamed of her family. Obviously, Amy’s Chinese Christmas is much different from the type of holiday Robert is used to. The last thing Amy wanted was for Robert to see her traditional Chinese household and scare him off. Unfortunately, her fear had come true when Robert and his family came over. When dinner came around Amy started to fall deeper in despair. “My relatives licked the ends of their chopsticks and reached across the table, dipping them into the dozen or so plates of food” (Fish Cheeks 2). Unlike Amy’s family, Robert’s family patiently waited for platters to be passed around. It wasn't the typical American food for Christmas either. “bulging fish eyes...tofu, which looked like stacked wedges of rubbery white sponges...a plate of squid, their backs crisscrossed with knife markings so they resembled bicycle tires: (Fish Cheeks 1). Amy glanced

Tan shows that she is embarrassed in her family for their lacking of proper American manners. Although at the time she felt ashamed, the words spoken by her mother, “Inside you must always be Chinese. You must be proud you are different. Your only shame is to have shame” became better understood later in life. In Amy Tan's work, the strong use of description of both the event that are occurring and Amy’s feelings about them, draws the reader in and makes them feel as if they are part of the action. Tan's Chinese-American culture and life stories are imprinted in her writing which gives the reader an opportunity to gain knowledge about the way of life in her family, friends, and even the Chinese culture. Tan's main purpose of writing is to inform and educate people about growing up as a minority in the American society.

Lee’s essay “Magical Dinners” and Slater’s “Tripp Lake” are two stories that allows you to see different situations that involve a parent and a child. They both struggle with different things one being with dramatic life changes that come with being a foreigner moving to the united states and one being a childhood camp experience and the mothers maternal fear of the daughter.In Magical Dinners it showcases the story of the authors mother and the frustrations of living in a place with unfamiliar food,language and faces. In Tripp Lake the author is the narrator and you see the mothers feelings convey through her daughter being able to do things she wasn 't when she was younger. In these two stories we will look at the impact both mothers had on there child 's lives and trying to please them through the events , actions and motions involved.Based on reading the two stories Magical dinners and Tripp lake i found that they have similarities that produce two different results.

The author supports her argument by sharing extremely personal details about what went on in her head on this christmas night. A quote that really stuck out for me here was about her relatives and how she was embarrassed about them and her culture. “What would he think of our noisy Chinese relatives who lacked proper American manners? What terrible disappointment would he feel upon seeing not a roasted turkey and sweet potatoes but Chinese food,” (Tan 1). I believe this helps her argument of how ‘Americans’ have a certain set of traditions that everyone is magically required to follow when the become citizens, no matter their own traditions and heritage. She uses this to make the audience think more deeply about how they would have reacted in this situation if they were in Robert’s shoes.

"Fish Cheeks" and "Broken Chain" both address a common theme about belonging. Both stories show that people act unlike themselves when they are trying to impress others or fit in. In the essay "Fish Cheeks" Amy Tan is embarrassed about her family's culture because it is different from her American neighbors. As a result Amy tries to hide it away and become something she is not. In the short story "Broken Chain" Alfonso meets a girl that he really likes. He believes that in order for her to like him back, he has to look and act like people on T.V. In both stories the main characters care about their image and what people think.

After the dinner, Tan’s mother surprised her with a miniskirt which Tan believed was also a norm for an American girl. Her mother points it out when she states “You want to be the same as American girls on the outside”. However, she tells Tan “But inside you must always be Chinese. You must be proud you are different. Your only shame is to have shame.” Tan at the time didn’t feel the same way and even stated she “didn’t agree with her then” but it wasn’t till later that she was able to “fully appreciate her lesson”. She comes to accept herself when she realizes that her mom had cooked “all my favorite foods”. This realization is that her shame was based off what she perceived other people outside her heritage might think instead of her own true feelings. Tan with stating how those were all her favorite food displayed how she concludes that these foods is what made her up as a person. She no longer put emphasis on her American background but instead as Chinese American

The short fiction piece Fish Cheeks, written by Amy Tan, is an autobiographical narrative. The story took place when Amy was fourteen years old, living in America. Amy had a huge crush on an American "blond-haired boy", Robert, who had a "slim new American nose". Robert was the minister's son. Amy's parents decided to host a Christmas Eve dinner, inviting the minister's family.

To conclude, Amy Tan realizes she must always be proud of who she is. Therefore, that night on a holiday dinner Amy learned about her identity through a significant

In the essay, Tan writes about Christmas Eve dinner when she was fourteen years old. Tan's mother invited the minister and his family over for dinner. Tan has a crush on Robert, the minister's son. She is mortified that her crush will witness a typical Chinese dinner, Tan believes Robert and his family will be disgusted by the meal her mother prepared, which consists of her favorite foods; squid, tofu, fish cheeks, and other Chinese delicacies. During the meal, Tan's mother offers her fish cheeks.

In the beginning of the story fish cheeks the author Amy Tan even if your culture is different than other you don’t have to be inbarest from your culture. Comments: Body paragraph claim 1 .Fish Cheeks by Amy Tan is about something that happened when Amy was a teenager. In the story, Amy's mother invites the minister and his family over for Christmas Eve dinner. Amy has a crush on the minister's son, Robert, and she was think what can Robert say about her family culture.

The poem “Fish Cheeks” is about a girl named Amy. Amy is a Chinese girl who wants to be like her friends, who are American. Amy needs to learn to be the person that Amy is. Amy also is embarrassed because of who Amy is and because Amy’s family isn’t like a “normal” American family. Replicating and embarrassment are two things that are seen in this text.

Amy Tan is an American writer, which bases most of her stories in the relationship between mother and daughter, and the Chinese-American experience. Tan is the author of the story “A pair of tickets,” which is a short story about a woman who takes a journey to China to inform her sisters about their mother’s death. The night before she was going to meet her sisters, her father shares with her the story about her mother’s previous life, making her realized how much she had never know about her mother. The next day she finally meets her sisters and understands that her blood is what makes her Chinese. Tan shows the main character Jing-Mei Woo struggling for her identity and through the use of setting, the discovering about heritage and symbolism, Amy Tan shows how the protagonist of the story comes to the realization of her identity as a Chinese woman.

Exist moments in our life where we learned a valuable lesson or gained a new insight about life, but sometimes we are unable to fully understand the magnitude of these lessons due to the lack of our knowledge owing to our age. As Amy Tan in “Fish Cheeks” did not appreciate the purpose behind the particular menu during Christmas Eve until many years later.