Champion Of The World And Fish Cheeks

526 Words3 Pages
“Fish Cheeks,” by Amy Tan and, “Champion of the World” by Maya Angelou are personal biographies about their childhood experiences. Theses short stories discuss racial problems and cultural differences. Each story expresses behavior, beliefs and traditions that distinctly identify their race and culture in a community where they are the minority. Amy Tan feels embarrassed because of Chinese culture and customs in the story "Fish Cheeks.” Amy's family is Chinese, and her mother cooked all of the family's favorite dishes for Christmas Eve dinner: tofu, squid, fish cheeks, and other dishes that Amy is afraid that the minister's family will find strange. She feels that her mother is going out of her way to cook the dishes that will make them seem even stranger and more different. She is also worried about how the behavior and customs of her large extended family will be perceived. Amy is also gets embarrassed by how her relatives eat noisily with chopsticks and reach across the table into different dishes…show more content…
The chapter describes the fight and and the confidence among the crowd of listeners. During that match, Joe Louis represented every African American at the time and Angelou compares his victory to their race overcoming all the horrible things that have happened to them. When the fight changes and Louis is pinned against the ropes, the confidence of the crowd disappears. It seemed as Louis was going to lose the fight. Angelou describes this as the world looking at their race and seeing people who are stupid, ugly, lazy, and dirty. Then, the fight changes and Joe Louis starts fighting back. Eventually, he wins the fight! He is the champion of the world and everyone in the room is very happy. They celebrate like gods, but as soon as they leave the store they are still treated lowly among the
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    As I read Amy Tan’s “Fish Cheeks” and Maya Angelou’s “Champion of the world” I have discerned several similarities. With the help of my peers, I have noticed that they both are minorities, young, and female. They both also struggle with being minorities, overcome shame, accept being different, celebrate with their people, and even the way they tell their stories seem alike. The most obvious similarity would be the fact that they are both young females. I assume that Angelou was around the age of

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