Amy Tan's Short Essay Fish Cheeks

However, when Amy learns that his family is coming to dinner, she cries. During the dinner, she is embarrassed because of her loud and rude chinese relatives and the particular Chinese menu that her mother had prepared. She only realizes many years later that “For Christmas Eve that year, she had chosen all my favorite foods,” (1). In this realization, Amy Tan learns that her

Franny talk about their life 's and what they have both been up to. They spend it by critique each other on how they should act and what they should not do. Franny tries to play the role of a good girlfriend listening and paying attention to what her boyfriend Lane has to say, but there bickering at one other cause Franny to argue with Lane on how she hates people that are phoniness and just wants to fade into the background and be a nobody. Throughout the story Franny 's comments on how a person has to act a certain way because of the social standards that are set. She spends her time in the story abiding by the standers and commenting on them causing her to have an emotional breakdown.

The night of the school dance that Penelope is Arnold’s date for, Roger invites the younger couple to dinner at a Denny’s an hour away from the school. Arnold quickly realizes and is ashamed to admit, that he has no money to pay for dinner for the two of them. Because of his embarrassment, he goes along to the restaurant knowing he won’t be able to pay that way he doesn’t disappoint Penelope. After dinner, Roger is willing to allow Arnold to borrow money to pay the bill (126).This is the first time their friendship begins to grow. Quickly after, Roger takes on the older brother role in his life.

To finish off, Isabella is an intelligent girl, in fact Isabella would help someone do something but weeks later she would earn something off of helping out. Those

Amy Tan incorporated this special mother-daughter bond in her story “Best Quality” and took Jing-Mei’s place as a daughter. The story tells about a mother Suyuan who just like Daisy wanted her daughter to be an outstanding person and a daughter Jing-Mei who like Amy wants to write and live her American life. At the story, Jing-Mei, her mother, and the Jongs family are having Chinese New Year dinner at which Suyuan serves crabs cooked by herself, and after finishing eating those crabs, guests start having conversations with each other. Later, Waverly Jong, who is the same age as Jing-Mei, and Jing-Mei argues about the work that Jing-Mei did for Waverly’s tax company. At the end of this argument, Suyuan takes Waverly’s

He calls out to his wife to resist and the scene vanishes. After going home, he loses faith in his religion and his wife after seeing the scene. “Where are You Going, How Have You Been” is about Connie, a pretty fifteen year old who is against her “plain and chunky” sister and her mother who had “once been pretty” (Oates, 1). However, what her mother does not know is that she spends her free time picking up boys at a Big Boy restaurant. One day, while there, she catches the eye of a stranger.

First off, Akunna receives two blank fortune cookies while eating with her boyfriend for the first time, right after they got together: “The next day, he took you to dinner at Chang’s and your fortune cookie had two strips of paper. Both of them were blank” (Adichie 7). The fortune cookies symbolize how the american dream can seem nice on the outside, but in reality, it is hollow and fake on the inside. Along with that, the blank fortune symbolizes how her relationship and her idea of The American Dream are fake and not as good as they seem.

The difference between first-generation immigrants and their children are significant. When Maxine invites Gogol to have dinner with her family in her house, Gogol is surprised and confused. As described, “This unexpected piece of information deflates him, confuses him. He asks if her parents will mind his coming over, if perhaps they should meet at a restaurant instead.”(p129) This proves the difference between American culture and Indian culture.

In the short story " The Birthday Party" by Katharine Brush, the author writes about a married couple in the 1940s having a dinner at a restaurant to celebrate the husband’s birthday. The wife surprises her husband with small cake, but rather than showing appreciation for his wife’s gesture, he scolds her for embarrassing him. Brush writes the story in a second-person narrative to have the reader experience the scenario, utilizes caricatures to describe the couple’s appearance, and symbolism to express the wife’s intention. The author's implies that not all marriages are as happy as they appear to be. Brush has the reader imagine him/herself at the restaurant viewing the couple sitting across the restaurants.

1. Toula Portokalos is a 30-year old American-Greek woman working as a waitress in her family’s restaurant. Toula is a shy wallflower who has never been in a real relationship before, also her family wishes nothing more than seeing her being married to a Greek man, has already given up hope of finding a husband for her. Toula starts taking courses at a local college to make more out of her life, she gets to know Ian and suddenly turns into an attractive independent woman.

Their relationship ended in frustration however because Yolanda refused to have sex with him for months. Sex which was seen as taboo in Dominican culture was a cultural norm in the 60’s for Americans. This clash of culture and Yolanda not truly being able to fit in with one specific culture ruined her chances at what could have been a wonderful relationship. Also when Yolanda returns to the island 20 years after her family originally moved she is teased by her aunts and cousins about the way she looks. “ You look terrible, too thin and the hair needs a cut.”

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

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.

The essay "Mother's Tongue" is written by Amy tan and published in 1990. In her essay she talks about languages and how they all vary especially how the English language varied in her life. She talks about all the "Englishes" she knew and used growing up. She has become a successful author and had attended events were she was invited to talk about her book. In one of those events she took her mother and during her speech she realized the way she was talking to the group of people was different from the way she would talk to her mom.

Growing up to be a decent human being is not easy. Experiences that are teachable moments can be comfortable or may be hurtful. People construe harmless events into catastrophic disasters. Amy Tan, Chinese American author, interprets her Christmas celebration to be an unpleasant event. In “Fish Cheeks,” Amy Tan uses diction and details to reveal her embarrassment of being Chinese.