What Is The Theme Of Fish Cheeks By Amy Tan

In the essay “fish Cheeks”, the essayist Amy Tan conveys that the main character is worried and embarrassed. “What would Robert think of our shabby Chinese Christmas? What would he think of our noisy Chinese relatives who lacked proper American manners?...” (Tan). After Amy is informed that the Minister's family is coming over for Christmas dinner, she silently begins to debate how the night will go with a multitude of what if questions. She is worried how Robert, and his family will react to some of her family's customs. “... I knew that she understood how much I suffered during the evening’s dinner” (Tan). Amy says she suffered during Christmas dinner because she was embarrassed on how her family

Amy Tan is an author who uses the theme of Chinese-American life, focusing mainly on mother-daughter relationships, where the mother is an immigrant from China and the daughter is a thoroughly Americanized --yellow on the surface and white underneath. In her book, the mother tries to convey their rich history and legacy to her daughter, who is almost completely ignorant of their heritage, while the daughter attempts to understand her hopelessly old- fashioned mother, who now seems to harbor a secret wisdom, who, in the end, is right about everything all along. At the opening of the story "A Pair of Tickets" Jandale Woo and her father are on a train, the are destined for China. Their first stop will be Guangzhou, China where he father will

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.

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 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.

Stories and stereotypes make many people want to change themselves negatively and assimilate just to fit in with society. As time passes, society’s stereotypes for how people of each race should be, which race is more dominant than others, and which race you should be, all play a role in impacting someone’s self-esteem and their insecurities. This is portrayed through Jin Wang, a main character in Gene Luen Yang’s “American Born Chinese” when Jin Wang thinks his crush, Amelia, he instantly becomes happy. But then he thinks about Greg and Amelia together and gets mad. He finally zooms into Greg’s blond hair. The next day he goes to school with the same hairstyle. The hair symbolizes Greg’s all American identity because the stereotypical American is portrayed with blond hair and blue eyes. To Jin Wang, this hair symbolizes what he wants to be, so he changed his hair to an “American” hairstyle to get Amelia to like him. Due to stereotypes about how Americans are suppose to look like, Jin Wang feels insecure about himself and wants to change his identity and himself as well to assimilate into American culture and stereotypes. These stereotypes and the Anti-Asian stereotypes impact Jin Wang greatly and make him hate himself as well as his background and where he came from because he believes that in order to be AMerica, you have to be white. Another way that this is portrayed is from a personal experience I had as a kid. Growing up as an Asian kid in America, I didn’t really know

She feels very embarrassed and wishes she were American. In the end of the story, she writes a quote that her mother actually told her, “You want to be the same as American girls on the outside. But inside you must always be Chinese. You must be proud you are different. Your only shame is to have shame” (Tan). In the end the character understood and knew that her mother was right. Tan was not confident with her Chinese identity when she was young, and that influenced some of her works like “Fish Cheeks”.

With working hard, comes compassion and lessons learned. In both stories, we see a big similarity- tough love and lessons learned. In “Fish Cheeks” by Amy tan we see this in a silent lesson. As they invite the ministers family over for Christmas Eve dinner, the mother has a treat for them. They are a chinese family and they don’t celebrate it with the old fashioned turkey and mashed potatoes, which the daughter, Amy, is nervous about for she has a major crush on the minister's son. She becomes embarrassed about her heritage and says, “I wanted to disappear” (Tan). Towards the end of the story, when the minister’s family leaves, the mother pulls Amy aside and states, “You want to be the same as American girls on the outside.. But inside you must always be Chinese. You must be proud you are different. Your only shame is to have shame.” and response to her mother, Amy agrees when she writes, “And even though I didn’t agree with

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.

The main character in “Poor Fish” is has a very low self-esteem in the beginning, but after meeting a woman named Ida his confidence started growing to new levels. Moravia uses inferiority to describe his individulaity in the story; “People never know very much about who they are, nor about who is inferior to them and who superior. As for me, I went too far in the direction of thinking myself inferior to everybody (Moravia).” The main character soon becomes too over-confident in himself, and this also alters how other people see him. The Whitley Abbey School District describes the individuality of the main characters in “The Tall Woman and Her Short Husband,” “[Mrs. Tall] seems to be the opposite of her husband in every respect; tall where he is short, thin where he is fat, dull where he is bright. The author does this to show that, although they don’t seem suited at all, their genuine love for each other makes physical differences irrelevant (Whitley Abbey School District).” All these physical and emotional differences contribute to their own uniqueness. They also go on to describe that “this is, at heart, a love story, describing a couple who stick together through thick and thin, who society has made outcasts but who have found belonging with each other. The two forget about usual conventions in order to best suit

The stories, "Broken Chain", and "Fish Cheeks" both multiple common themes. Two of which are, impressing and belonging. In Broken Chains, it is shown by the character, Alfronso, who is trying to impress a girl he likes.  Similarly, in Fish Cheeks, Amy Tan, a Chinese girl, is trying to impress a boy she likes. In these stories, they both want to change their appearances, are embarrassed at one point, and they want to be like someone else.

Throughout the entire world, there is an idea of the social facade of how one should appear and no one is an exception to this. The south is particularly known for this and is seen throughout the various stories read in this class. One author who demonstrates this concept of social facade is Katherine Anne Porter in her story, The Jilting of Granny Weatherall. It is the story of a grandmother who is a hypocrite, not only to herself, but the whole town and obsessed with her appearance in how people view her and her family.These ideas can also be seen in Flannery O’Connor’s story A Good Man Is Hard to Find and Porter’s other story, The Old Order. The main theme seen in these stories is this idea of social facade and hypocrisy.

Parenting for the Chinese is all about the power they have upon their children. They tell their children what they can and cannot do when they have time to spare. On the other hand, Hanna is the complete opposite to Amy. What the privilege American needed was to learn to lighten up and a way to express themselves, not more skills, math drills, and rules. Hanna believed that children should grow up in a way a parent aren’t making any influence of their choices they are making in their lives.

In 7th grade Michael and Victor decide it is a good idea to scowl to make them seem cooler. “I think it works,” Michael said. He scowled and let his upper lip quiver.” Victor goes along and decides to do it too. Victor also pretends to speak French to blow Teresa away. He says “La me vave me con le grandma,” Teresa asks him to tutor him because he is so good at French and now he has to study and learn French immediately in order to stay with the person he is desperately trying to impress. In Fish Cheeks Amy pretends like she isn’t a part of the crazy Chinese Christmas and she is like the other American girls. She cries when she finds out that Robert has been invited over and hope he hopefully likes her back. She was thinking “What would Robert think of our shabby Chinese Christmas?” Her actions were, pretending the food is weird and not eating any of it. She also acts like she is American and not Chinese like the rest of her family.

She talks about how the food is different, the eating style is different, and how she and her family had no idea how to react when these things were not how they were done in China. Within the first page, Lensey talks about the first feeling of alienation she feels. When The Gleason family gives the Namioka family raw celery, they had no idea how to eat it considering they never ate raw celery. They began to rip off the long strings from the stalk creating a zip sound calling the attention of the other attendees at the party. Quickly, the family becomes quiet after noticing the silence of the other families and they begin to feel different and separate from everyone else. The beautiful part of the story is the connection of the two families. On one side, the Namioka family felt embarrassed when they slurped their soup at an expensive restaurant. This is similar to the end of the story when Megan, the daughter in the Gleason family, slurped her milkshake after diner at Dairy Queen. Lensey felt this was strange and that feeling of alienation came back, but Meg confirmed this was how to drink the milkshake by saying, “Sure, All-Americans Slurp.” (67) Thus creating the title The All-American Slurp. The family, specifically Lensey, felt awkward and out of place due to the fact she was not used to the American lifestyle. This story shows how even though the two girls were born in different countries, there were still little things that connected them