Comparing Champion Of The World And Amy Tan's Fish Cheeks

777 Words2 Pages

In Maya Angelou’s Champion of the World and Amy Tan’s Fish Cheeks both convey their struggles with identity. Both authors are from minority cultures, and describe the same harsh pressures from the dominant culture. They share situations of being outcasts, coming from different racial backgrounds and trying to triumph over these obstacles. Tan and Angelou speak about the differences between their childhood selves and white Americans. Tan talks about the anxiety of a teenage girl who feels embarrassed about her Chinese culture, and who wants to fit in with American society. Angelou’s explains the racial tension and hostility between African and white Americans. In the essay Champion of the World, Maya Angelou talks about a boxing fight that …show more content…

She talks about how she felt ashamed about her culture and the food. In Amy Tan's essay, she had a crush on boy from the minister's family named Robert. They were invited to have Christmas Eve's dinner at Tan's place. Tan was curious about how the minister's family would react when they saw Chinese food instead of traditional turkey and mashed potatoes. She was thinking to herself that what Robert will think about the evening. The minister's family arrived and started digging in on the appetizers. Tan was embarrassed to sit with them at the table because the minister's family was surprised. But as the evening prolonged, Tan's father said “Tan, your favorite" as he served the fish cheeks to her (Tan …show more content…

She used food as a life lesson to tell us about how she tried to fit in the American society and felt ashamed for the unorthodox Christmas Eve dinner. ""You want to be the same as the American girls outside, but inside you must always be Chinese" says Tan's mother" (Tan 100). She teaches Tan a lesson on how she should not feel ashamed about her culture and should be proud of being different. Tan realized when the night was over, her mother made all her favorites for the Christmas Eve dinner. Tan desires to be accepted, whereas Angelou wanted for the equality and the success of her people. The purpose of each differs as well. Angelou's purpose is to describe how the African-American culture has proved them-selves, yet they are still faced with prejudice. Tan dislikes her culture because of how others will judge her for it, but she learns that she should be proud to be

Show More
Related

  • Fish Cheeks Rhetorical Analysis Essay

    457 Words  | 1 Pages

    Using the detail,“Dinner threw me deeper into despair,” conveys the painful feelings caused by her family at dinner (Paragraph 5). This detail indicates that Tan was continuingly losing hope that the night would get better. Tan reveals these agonizing feelings to make the reader feel compunctious. In making the reader feel sorry for her, Tan knows she can continue to misreport details in the passage without being questioned. The detail,“What would he think of our noisy Chinese relatives who lacked proper American manners,” emblematizes the dishonor Tan feels towards her relatives and cultural background (Paragraph 2). This detail implies that due to Tan’s attraction to Robert, she will detract her feelings of others to better her relationship with Robert. Tan used this detail to reveal that if Tan cannot better her relationship with Robert, she will become despondent. As a result of distorting details, the passage illustrates Tan’s dishonorable feelings towards her cultural

    Read More

  • 'Broken Chain And Fish Cheeks'

    303 Words  | 1 Pages

    In the story, "Fish Cheeks" it talks about how Amy Tan's Chinese family invites an American boy's family over for dinner. Amy Tan wants to impress him and thinks that he wont like the food her mother made even though it is her favorite food. She can tell that he doesn't like the food and she is embarased. So, Amy wants to fit in.

    Read More

  • Figurative Language In Amy Tan's Fish Cheeks

    520 Words  | 2 Pages

    When people are introduced to a new environment they feel a need to adapt to the dominant culture. In “Fish Cheeks,” a biographical narrative by Amy Tan, Amy’s parents invite the minister and his son, Amy’s crush, Robert to join them for a Christmas Eve dinner along with Amy’s relatives. Throughout the story, Amy is conflicted between embracing her culture and distancing herself from it in order to fit in. Tan’s use of figurative language and specific details throughout the narrative portrays contrasting perspectives between Amy’s view of the dinner and the view of the adults.

    Read More

  • Symbolism In Maya Angelou's Champions Of The World

    790 Words  | 2 Pages

    In “Champions of the World,” is the nineteenth chapter in I Know Why the Caged Bird sings, is written by Maya Angelou. In this chapter, she talks about a African American community in the late 1930s in Arkansas, that are gathered one night in a store to listen to a boxing match which consists of African American professional boxer Joe Louis and his opponent that night was Primo Carnera, a white boxer from Italy. This fight is more than a physical fight for the African community. Joe Louis is seen as a hero in the African community because he is the one that represents the African community; their fate depends on Joe Louis victory. There is segregation happening during this time and the Jim Crow laws which impacted this area. People were feeling

    Read More

  • Mother Tongue by Amy Tan

    1081 Words  | 3 Pages

    Amy Tan’s ,“Mother Tongue” and Maxine Kingston’s essay, “No Name Woman” represent a balance in cultures when obtaining an identity in American culture.  As first generation Chinese-Americans both Tan and Kingston faced many obstacles. Obstacles in language and appearance while balancing two cultures. Overcoming these obstacles that were faced and preserving heritage both women gained an identity as a successful American.

    Read More

  • Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

    633 Words  | 2 Pages

    The United States is known for having diversity. This is what makes America, America. Those people being from a different country struggle to make a life here and accustom to daily life here in the United States. In Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's Americanah, a novel in which we see microaggression, intersectionality, diasposa space, and literary motifs take place, we see racism and how it affects the lives of black immigrants and in her perspective female immigrants in today's American society. Chimamamda Ngozi Adichie helps us understand how these roles take place and how it affects in modern society. In Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's Americanah novel, she lets us see how it is to be a strong black female immigrant and how race and gender

    Read More

  • Mother Daughter Relationships - The Mother-daughter Relationship in Amy Tan's The Joy Luck Club

    821 Words  | 2 Pages

    The second and third sections are about the daughters' lives, and the vignettes in each section trace their personality growth and development. Through the eyes of the daughters, we can also see the continuation of the mothers' stories, how they learned to cope in America. In these sections, Amy Tan explores the difficulties in growing up as a Chinese-American and the problems assimilating into modern society. The Chinese-American daughters try their best to become "Americanized," at the same time casting off their heritage while their mothers watch on, dismayed. Social pressures to become like everyone else, and not to be different are what motivate the daughters to resent their nationality. This was a greater problem for Chinese-American daughters that grew up in the 50's, when it was not well accepted to be of an "ethnic" background.

    Read More

  • Toni Morrison and Historical Memory

    5000 Words  | 10 Pages

    Most of literature written by American minority authors is pedagogic, not toward the dominant culture, but for the minority cultures of which they are members. These authors realize that the dominant culture has misrepresented minority history, and it is the minority writers' burden to undertake the challenge of setting the record straight to strengthen and heal their own cultures. Unfortunately, many minorities are ambivalent because they vacillate between assimilation (thereby losing their separateness and cultural uniqueness) and segregation from the dominant culture. To decide whether to assimilate, it is essential for minorities to understand themselves as individuals and as a race. Mainstream United States history has dealt with the past of the dominant culture forgetting about equally important minority history. We cannot convey true American history without including and understanding minority cultures in the United States, but minority history has to first be written. National amnesia of minority history cannot be tolerated. Toni Morrison is a minority writer has risen to the challenge of preventing national amnesia through educating African-Americans by remembering their past and rewriting their history. In her trilogy, Beloved, Jazz and Paradise, and in her other works, Morrison has succeeded in creating literature for African-Americans that enables them to remember their history from slavery to the present.

    Read More

  • Christmas Dinner In Fish Cheeks, By Amy Tan

    509 Words  | 2 Pages

    Throughout the story, “Fish Cheeks,” by Amy Tan, the author speaks of her “worst” Christmas dinner when her family invited Amy’s crush and his family for christmas dinner. Overall, the story was actually telling of her best Christmas dinner ever where her parents taught her to respect her culture and not be afraid to be who she was. The author and narrator, Amy Tan, used tone to convey this message to the audience in a few different ways in the story.

    Read More

  • Maya Angelou Figurative Language

    1114 Words  | 3 Pages

    “My race groaned it was our people falling. it was another lynching, yet another black man hung on a tree. One more women ambushed and raped…” she uses hyperboles to show the readers how devastating it would be to the black community if joe lost that fight. In doing so she also gives background on the setting, and how blacks were treated during that point in time. Angelou doesn’t state it word for word, but she finally leaves room for the readers to infer why that particular fight was so important and why the mood was so tense at the start of the story. Another hyperbole shed light on a major conflict, Person Vs Society. “If joe lost we were back in slavery, beyond help. It would all be true, the accusations that we were lower types of human beings.” The fight was a symbol for hope, hope that all inferior views on the black community would disappear. Right before the radio announcers reveal that Joe won, Angelou starts to write in fragments, “we didn’t breathe we didn’t hope. we waited.” it was used to draw out the last feel of apprehension. in the conclusion of Champion of the World Maya Angelou strategically picks out vocabulary words like “Champion of the World, some black boy…” to prove what a shock it was to everyone, it reinforces her symbol of hope by saying if he won then anyone else can triumph. However Angelou ends the narrative with “it wouldn’t do for a black man and his family to be caught on a lonely country road on an night when joe louis had proved that we were the strongest people in the world.” to reinstate that no matter what they believed, the fight still didn’t end the racial

    Read More

  • Americanization in The Joy Luck Club

    1951 Words  | 4 Pages

    Oftentimes the children of immigrants to the United States lose the sense of cultural background in which their parents had tried so desperately to instill within them. According to Walter Shear, “It is an unseen terror that runs through both the distinct social spectrum experienced by the mothers in China and the lack of such social definition in the daughters’ lives.” This “unseen terror” is portrayed in Amy Tan’s The Joy Luck Club as four Chinese women and their American-born daughters struggle to understand one another’s culture and values. The second-generation women in The Joy Luck Club prove to lose their sense of Chinese values, becoming Americanized.

    Read More

  • Chinese and American Cultures

    4366 Words  | 9 Pages

    Chinese-Americans authors Amy Tan and Gish Jen have both grappled with the idea of mixed identity in America. For them, a generational problem develops over time, and cultural displacement occurs as family lines expand. While this is not the problem in and of itself, indeed, it is natural for current culture to gain foothold over distant culture, it serves as the backdrop for the disorientation that occurs between generations. In their novels, Tan and Jen pinpoint the cause of this unbalance in the active dismissal of Chinese mothers by their Chinese-American children.

    Read More

  • Rhetorical Analysis Of Mother Tongue By Amy Tan

    735 Words  | 2 Pages

    The Amy tan story focused on her mother and how she looked down because of her limited English language and how people disrespected her mother or ignored her. In fact that people in department stores, at banks, and at restaurants did not take her mother seriously, they did not give her good service and they pretended not to understand her, or even acted as if they did not hear her. She uses Logos, Pathos, and Ethos she does this well by giving examples and having emotional appeal and makes herself relevant. She was able to use her personal example...

    Read More

  • The Struggles in Maya Angelou's Life

    924 Words  | 2 Pages

    Walker, Pierre A. Racial protest, identity, words, and form in Maya Angelou’s I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. Vol. 22. West Chester: Collage Literature, n.d. Literary Reference Center. Web. 8 Apr. 2014. .

    Read More

  • Summary Of The Champion Of The World By Maya Angelo

    789 Words  | 2 Pages

    Maya Angelo’s "champion of the world" is much more than the chapter of the book. During 30 's people of the black ethnic group were not much worth. "Champion of the world a black boy. Some black mother 's son “defines the struggle of the black people at that time. The battle against white contender was not just an ordinary victory. It was a victory of the black defeating the system.

    Read More

More about Comparing Champion Of The World And Amy Tan's Fish Cheeks

Open Document