In “Fish Cheeks,” Amy Tan describes a Christmas Eve dinner hosted by her family in order to create a contrast between cultures. She is embarrassed by the Chinese food her family is eating, and she is ashamed of her own culture.
Amy Tan was born in 1952 in Oakland, California, to Chinese immigrants. As a child, she was ashamed of her Chinese heritage and wished she were white. She was embarrassed by her mother’s broken English and felt that she could never measure up to her white classmates. In “Fish Cheeks,” Tan describes a dinner party her family hosted when she was fourteen years old. The dinner was to celebrate Tan’s Christmas Eve baptism, and the guests included the family’s white pastor and his wife. Tan was mortified when her mother served the pastor and his wife fish heads, which are considered a Chinese delicacy. She was even more embarrassed when her mother started to weep with joy at the prospect of her daughter being baptized. In the end, Tan realized that her mother was just as proud of her Chinese heritage as she was. She also learned that there was nothing wrong with being different from her classmates. “Fish Cheeks” is a reminder that we should all be proud of our cultures.
