Amy Tan Fish Cheeks Summary

The shame that comes from culture is something that develops through time-based on looking at the world around and focusing on what in the culture they lack. Only can that person determine their worth and the worth of their culture’s people. Amy Tan is a freelance writer who attended the University of California and four others in the area as well. She received her B.A. with a double major in English and Linguistics, followed by her M.A. in Linguistics. In “Fish Cheeks” Tan utilizes a shift in tone and imagery to persuade her audience that “Your only shame is to have shame” (par. 7).

Tan utilizes imagery to replicate the thoughts that she believes her long-time crush Robert has when looking at her family’s traditional Christmas Eve dinner.

Tan uses vivid imagery when describing the cod at her dinner table, “with bulging eyes that pleaded not to be thrown away” or the tofu, “which looked like rubbery white sponges” (par. 3). The author makes use of the imagery by allowing the audience to be able to envision the food and to understand that Amy is taking Robert’s perspective while she describes the food that her mother is preparing for dinner. In looking through the eyes of Robert coming to the conclusion that 14-year old Amy is very self-conscious about what Robert will think of the array of food set out at their non-American Christmas Eve dinner. When brought to the topic of her relatives she looks at their actions with embarrassment, “My relatives licked the ends of their chopsticks and reached across the table, dipping them into the dozen or so plates of food...I wanted to disappear” (par. 5). In this case, the author uses imagery to illustrate her embarrassment and distress in the actions of her relatives. By utilizing imagery it allows a pull on, in the beginning, past events that might have been similar situations, bringing to light her shame for her family and Chinese heritage. This audience should be able to feel her embarrassment and reminisce about past events similar to Tan’s experience. To develop her full purpose she also uses a selfish tone and an understanding tone, as a way to tell her reader that this event had already occurred, meaning it is in the past.
These tones are used to display the authors view on her dinner without physically having to write it out.

It also allows the audience to realize when the author is more serious or sarcastic by her tone. In one of Tan’s first sentences, she talks about her humiliation brought on by her background and the actions of her family, “What would he think of our noisy Chinese relatives who lacked proper American Manners?” (par.1). The switch of tone between selfishness and understanding is able to demonstrate both sides of Tan’s story where one side is her young and naive self and on the other is her older more experienced self. With an ungrateful tone, in the beginning, it displays her view, that she doesn't like her current background and how it is different to her crush Robert’s. The true intent of why Tan’s mother chose that certain menu of food was revealed later in the piece, “I didn’t agree with her then, I knew that she understood how much I had suffered during that evening's dinner. It wasn’t until many years later...that I was able to fully appreciate her lesson and true purpose behind our particular menu” (par. 8). This time the author utilizes the tone to switch from her selfish 14-year old self to an understanding tone in her later years. This allows the author to convey her understanding of what her parents did for her and how she could not see it then, but she can now. Those who struggle with finding and identifying their culture in today's world, the audience, may be

able to look back at times where they didn’t appreciate something that their parent had done for them but later realized.
Tan utilizes imagery with a switch in tone in her piece “Fish Cheeks” to convince her audience that the “only shame is to have shame”(par. 7). Culture doesn’t only come from where a family originated, but it also comes from the everyday lives and the way they interact, who is to say that one foot cannot be in two countries.