The short essay “Fish Cheeks” by Amy Tan is an autobiographical short essay describing the experience of Amy, a fourteen-year-old American-Chinese girl, at an embarrassing dinner party her family hosted. One of the people invited was her crush, an American pastor’s son, and, because of the cultural difference, he did not understand the table manners or the food choices of the Chinese diners. Through this embarrassing experience- showing how different her culture and, by extension, she was to her crush- she learned to accept her native Chinese culture, even if she did want to assimilate into the new, American culture. Throughout the short essay, Tan repeatedly reiterates her embarrassment throughout the night’s party using vivid word choice.
In amy tan’s “ fish cheeks “, Tan’s uses a motif to express her main message. The motif that is carried throughout the story is culture and a message she ties into that is that always keep culture close to who you are. In the short story tan tells us something she learned from her mom was if you are “want[ing] to be the same as american on the outside… but [on the] inside you must always be chinese.” ( tan 7 ) tan tells us this because she wants us to realize that it doesn't matter who or what we are; meaning if we are wanting to be american great but keep your culture close to and apart of you.
Antwone Fisher Memoir Essay Finding Fish is a story of a young, unloved boy growing up and overcoming all obstacles and hardships in order to become an amazing man. Antwone Quenton Fisher was born on August 3, 1959, in Cleveland, Ohio. He was born in a prison to Eva Mae Fisher and Eddie Elkins, who was killed before he was born. As a result of this, Antwone grew up in the foster system and he was placed in the unloving home of his foster parents, Mrs. Isabella Pickett and Reverend Ulysses Pickett.
Schmitt narrates in a fascinating and descriptive way wherein her readers feel as if they are experiencing her circumstances with her. At the beginning of the narrative, the reader can relate to Schmitt’s challenge in getting to know her new neighbors, especially with the challenging language barrier. Schmitt speaks of how she is “persistence... repeatedly [trying] to engage [her neighbors], saying hello at every encounter” (Schmitt 108). The readers continue to relate to Schmitt’s struggle to understand a new culture with the following scenarios: Schmitt offers her neighbor brownies, only to have it occur to her “that Chinese traditionally don’t like excessively sweet Western desserts” (Schmitt), and when Schmitt arrives at her neighbor’s home with a basket of red roses to offer her sympathy for their mourning, she regretfully realizes
Human nature causes people not to want to be an outlier and as such they try to be like other people. Culturism is a big complexity in people. Amy tan uses different literary devices to help reader understand the theme and the mood of the passage. Amy Tan uses significant contrast to compare Chinese culture and food to American culture and food by using figurative language; Amy Tan also uses nasty imagery to express feelings.
In Seventeen’s reflective anecdote “Fish Cheeks,” appeared in the magazine in 1987 and was written by a woman of Chinese descent about a distinct Christmas when she was fourteen, the author utilizes ashamed diction to demonstrate her disappointment and utter embarrassment in her family’s Chinese traditions, appalled imagery to describe her thoughts toward her crush’s feelings about her mother’s food, and desperate parallel structure to convey her insatiable thirst to fit in and be accepted by the minister’s son, in order to explain her former horror of her crush’s judgment and how, later in life, she learns that preserving her family’s culture is
Lessons from the Culture Every year we see family emigrate to other countries, and they face many challenges. The stories “Sweet, Sour, and Resentful”, by Firoozeh Dumas, and from “Fish Cheeks”, by Amy Tan, share similar cultures and really interesting stories. Also, both families from the essay share several challenges that they are face when they move to the United States of America. The two families share many similarities; however, they differ in to keeping their culture, showing openness, and teaching a lesson from their culture to others.
One of the biggest problems in America today is creating equal opportunities for people of foreign descent. Most people that come from other countries around the world to live in America struggle with fitting in and mixing cultures. American Born Chinese, by Gene Luen Yang, is a book that displays what it is like to have trouble fitting in and choosing between two different identities. The format of the book revolves around pictures and vignettes that show stereotypes and assimilation towards Asian people. The visual representation of these themes give us a better understanding of the stress and troubles that come with trying to fit in physically and mentally.
Similarly, David Hwang’s 10-minute play “Trying to Find Chinatown” centers on an encounter between Ronnie, a Chinese-American street musician, and Benjamin, a Caucasian tourist from Wisconsin who identifies himself as Asian-American, in the busy street of New York. In the play, “each character defines who he believes he is: Benjamin is convinced he is a Chinese American, and Ronnie sees
Culture differences, the differences of culture that has been created due to immigration, can create many tensions between generations in a household. The short story “The Jade Peony” manifests culture shock through two incidents. The first incident is depicted when Jung, Kiam, Liang were talking to their dad and telling him how grandma’s unacceptable disgusting behavior was causing them to get insulted by their friends. “The problem for the rest of the family was in the fact that Grandma looked for these treasures wandering the back alleys” “All our friends are laughing at us!”. Their father replied to this by telling to stop this but in the back of his head he thought “how could he dare tell the Grand Old One, his aging mother,
By using easily understood English and short sentences, Tan is humbling herself before her audience and makes the text immediately intimate. It is a text that her mother could comprehend and read with ease. To allow the readers to connect to her story even further, Tan quotes her mother in her broken English. This shows the reader how difficult it can be to understand Tan's mother's English and how different it is from the English Tan has learned through formal
Did you know that two-thirds of the young population feel pressured to look a certain way? American Born Chinese by Gene Luen Yang is a graphic novel about Jin Wang, an average teenager juggling his high school social life with his home life. By using character and composition, Yang emphasizes transformation through the change in Jin’s actions and determination, indicating he feels pressured to assimilate to feel socially accepted. Through character development, Yang depicts Jin’s transformation through his actions as in American-born Chinese.
Throughout the entire novel, the mothers and daughters face inner struggles, family conflict, and societal collision. The divergence of cultures produces tension and miscommunication, which effectively causes the collision of American morals, beliefs, and priorities with Chinese culture which
At the end of the dinner Amy's father burped loudly as it is a sign of respect towards the cook showing gratitude for the food. After everyone had left, Amy’s mother noticed her embarrassment all night and said “You want to be the same as American girls on the outside.” She the handed Amy an early gift, It was a beige tweed colored mini skirt. After she told Amy that she must always be Chinese on the inside and to be proud of who she was, because the only shame is to be ashamed. It took Amy years to truly figure out what her mother was trying to teach her, and after she figured it out she was proud of her ethnicity.
Read this quote from the text. “There I was, a ten-year-old orphan.…six years I lived like this…She told me about American men who wanted Asian wives. If I can cook, clean, and take care of my American husband, he’ll give me a good life. It was the only hope I had. No one understood me, and I understood nothing
Amy Tan is a Chinese-American author who was born on February 19, 1952, in Oakland, California. In Tan’s early life she had many struggles because her parents desired for her “to hold onto Chinese traditions and her own longings to become more Americanized” (Encyclopedia). While she wanted to become a writer when she was still young, her parents wanted her to become a neurosurgeon. When she got older and went to college she majored in English then started her career in the 1970’s. She was a technical writer and then started writing fiction stories.