Amy Tan Fish Cheeks Essay

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In her story fish cheeks, Amy Tan writes about her Christmas dinner experience by describing the dinner in negative and positive perspectives to reveal how much time and age can change the perspective of a person on the same event. Amy Tan uses a reflective tone to discuss the lesson she learned to reveal a mature and positive perspective of the Christmas dinner. In the last paragraph of fish cheeks, Amy mentions “it wasn’t until many years later…. that I was able to fully appreciate her lesson and the true purpose behind our particular menu” which indicates that her mother was making a certain menu to make Amy realize that it’s ok to be different and it’s ok to have a different culture that represents them as an individual. Amy also mentions “for Christmas Eve that year, she has chosen all my favorite foods” indicating that even though at the time she didn’t admit it, everything her mother made for the Christmas dinner was actually all of her favorite meals. By using reflective tones in the statement, it reveals that as Amy grew…show more content…
Amy uses defective descriptions of the Christmas dinner to discuss how ashamed she was of what her mother made that night. The purpose behind her mother’s menu was that she wanted to show Amy that even if Chinese culture id different from American culture, it can still be something to be proud of but at the time Amy didn’t fully understand that. Amy mentions “A plate of squid, their backs crisscrossed with knife” making it so they resembled bicycle tires which isn’t something anyone wants to eat or ever put in the same category as food. Amy used bad or defective descriptions of her mothers’ menu mainly because she thought that was how the ministers’ family saw the food as, just because the food Amy and her family served for the Christmas dinner was different from the American cultural Christmas dinner with roasted turkey and sweet

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