Compare And Contrast Fish Cheeks And Champion Of The World

The piece describes what she envisioned her time in China would be like; visions of small talk and drinking tea danced in her head (Schmitt 125). This is a bit admirable to a more reserved person because it shows how outgoing she is when diving into a new culture. However, the reality of a language barrier and day to day behavior settled in. A series of uncomfortable exchanges illustrate the challenge of being accepted into a new culture. Described in the essay are people standing around in bath robes and under garments and popping in and out of rooms like some sort of clown

In “champion of the world”, a chapter in Maya Angelou’s autobiography, “I know why the caged bird sings”, she reflects on what it was like to be African American in the 1920s. She describes her uncle Willie’s store, a place where the black community gathered to listen to a boxing match. Angelou shows the anti-white sentiments of her community through derogatory dialogue, aggressive diction, and celebratory imagery. She demonstrates this through the victory of Joe Louis, an African American boxer, against a white competitor.

Tan’s gross and repulsive family “licked the ends of their chopsticks and reached across the table, dipping them into the dozen or so plates of food.” Her dreadful family is double dipping and has no table manners. Through her use of detail, the author further emphasizes the differences between her family and Robert’s family. These vast differences fill Tan with embarrassment and discomfort on Robert’s behalf along with self-doubt. Another example is the description given of Robert’s polite and quiet family. They are illustrated when Tan says “Robert and his family waited patiently for platters to be passed to them.” Robert’s patient and well-mannered family is expressed through the use of detail. The use detail further exemplifies the differences between the two families, therefore, further enforcing the author’s humiliation of her family’s actions the fluctuation of cultural differences reinforces the author’s belief that Robert dislikes her. For the duration of the description of the dinner, the narrator creates a deep contrast between her family and Robert’s, showing what her family looks like in his

After she stops speaking, Angelou and her brother are sent back to Stamps. Here, she begins to see the solace that many blacks feel in their resignation and acceptance of prejudice and racism. She writes, "They showed me a contentment based on the belief that nothing more was coming to them, although a great deal more was due. Their decision to be satisfied with life's inequities was a lesson for me" (Angelou 86). Angelou learned this lesson, but never quite became satisfied with life's inequities; thankfully, she retained some of her rage regarding inequalities between white and black, which give great depth and emotion to her writing and her life.

Maya Angelou and Amy Tan discuss religious problems and culture differences in their literature. The authors have captured these differences by their past experiences of friends and family. Both authors come from a diverse culture, but both face the same harsh society of the American culture and beliefs. The Author's both tell about situations in their short stories of being outcasts and coming from different racial backgrounds and trying to triumph over these obstacles. Angelou and Tan both have a very unique writing ability and style in their short stories.

The defeat of Joe Louis would show the weakness of African American’s, reassure white people of their place in society, and would keep African Americans under oppression. Unlike a defeat, a win would show the strength African Americans possess; a win would prove that African Americans are the strongest people in the world. It is not about being strong physically, but they must be mentally tough enough to handle the oppression day by day.The amount of pressure in the room is shown by the precise wording and imagery, Maya describes the situation by saying, “there were a few sounds from the audience, but they seemed to be holding themselves in against tremendous pressure” (135-136). The syntax Maya Angelou uses reveals the anxiety African Americans were experiencing during the match. Maya Angelou chooses to use abrupt and concise sentences such as, “We didn’t breathe. We didn’t

Amy Tan’s short story, Fish Cheeks, outlines the general idea of self-acceptance. As the narrator, fourteen year old Tan declares her love for her minister’s son, Robert, who unlike herself, is “as white as Mary in the manger” (Tan 1). This crush is anything but healthy, primarily because Tan is reluctant to reveal her true self to him. This hesitance she portrays is strikingly recognizable in the teenagers of today’s world. Amy Tan 's story, "Fish Cheeks," is significant to the adolescents of today 's society through the overall structure, quality, and applicability of the piece as the struggle to accept oneself as an individual is still as present as it ever was.

The tale “American Born Chinese” by Gene Luch Wang depicts the story of three characters, Monkey, Jin, and Danny. They all have the problem of fitting into their new environments. Jin Wang has to deal with Asian stereotypes. Danny has to deal with embarrassment of his cousin. Lastly, Monkey has to deal with the fact that there is no position for him in the heavenly ranks. However, over time, these characters have to come together to fit in. Yet the question remains: what exactly about fitting in is the problem? Although Jin Wang takes the form of Danny to reject his Chinese roots, the embarrassment of Chin-Knee shows he cannot hide behind a false American identity, thereby delineating that race is the source of his problem.

“Graduation Day” illustrates Maya Angelou’s experience on her graduation day. All of Angelou’s feelings, reasoning, and thoughts of her graduation day are depicted between the pages of her short story. Her text covers multiple different aspects of a segregated community’s lifestyle and explains their decisions on coping with their limitations. The power of words impacts the community in several ways during Angelou’s story. Because words impact and shape people, they influence individuals into themselves.

In “Champion of the World” Maya Angelou writes about Joe Louis’ road to success in how he changed boxing for his race. Angelou writes, “This might be the end of the world. If Joe lost we were back in slavery and beyond help. It would all be true; the accusations that we were lower types of human beings. Only a little higher than apes.” Angelou is trying to convey that if Joe loses this fight, everything white men think about Negros is true. Joe’s people need him to win this fight to prove a point to white people, and

Loraine Hansberry’s “A Raisin in The Sun” and Milcha Sanchez-Scott’s “The Cuban Swimmer” both capture the authors’ past experiences of oppression, and convey their struggles with identity. Both authors are from minority cultures, and both describe the same harsh pressures from the dominant culture. Both author’s share situations of being outcasts, coming from different racial backgrounds and trying to triumph over these obstacles.

Amy Tan and Juniot Diaz have contrasting ideas about assimilation as they present them through the characters in their stories. Amy Tan’s piece, Fish Cheeks is about Amy feeling embarrassed about her Chinese heritage when her American crush Robert and his family go to her house for dinner. In Fish Cheeks, Amy supports that one should assimilate and change their culture ideals to fit in. For example, in the first paragraph she says, “For Christmas I [prayed for this blond-haired boy, Robert, and a slim new American Nose” (Fish Cheeks). Amy is in support of assimilating extremely as she wishes for an American nose. Other examples of her support in assimilating is how she describes her embarrassment of the chinese culture. Amy questions her

Throughout this course we have explored many themes in the books that we have read. While many themes have been looked at and discussed, the main thing that I learned is that they rarely come by themselves. Most of the works that we have studied included many themes interwoven together to give the novels a real world feel—because in the real world, issues of gender, race, sexuality, poverty, etc rarely are isolated.In Shani Mootoo’s Novel Valmiki’s Daughter we looked at themes of race, sexuality/ LGBT issues, and national cultures to name a few. The intersectionality of these themes is what makes her novel rich with depth and value, and is what I will analyze in this paper.

This passage from Maiden Voyage by Denton Welch is an account of an adventurous European boy in China who wishes to explore the different cultures and experience the extraordinary. Yet he is overwhelmed by the barbarity of the new culture and this reveals to the reader the unexpectedness of life from the boys perspective. Through the first person narrative and detailed descriptions of the events, various themes such as teenage rebelliousness, gap between different cultures and our limited knowledge is highlighted through different literary features such as contrast, colour imagery and metaphor.

Tan also uses food imagery as a characterization device. When Kwan recounts the story of Buncake, Kwan’s description of Du Yun’s skillful preparation of fried frogs provides a painful parallel to Buncake’s recollections of how her mother and father died. Buncake, who has been orphaned by the early ‘re-education’ efforts that swept China just before the total communist take-over, is taken in by Kwan’s aunt, Du Yun, a woman who prides herself on one special culinary creation- freshly killed frogs, quickly sautéed in hot oil until they are crisp. As Du Yun deftly skins and dismembers the frogs, she fails to notice that Buncake is cowering silently behind Kwan with her fist jammed into her mouth ‘like a sandbag stopping a leak in a riverbank’ (250). Speechless, Buncake is unable to explain to Du Yun that the scene is horrifically distressing, that ‘this tearing of skin from flesh’ reminds her of how her mother and father had died while she watched from the tree in which her father had hidden her. Buncake has not spoken since then because her last promise to her mother had been that she would be quiet and not say a word or make a sound.