Wait a second!
More handpicked essays just for you.
More handpicked essays just for you.
What is amy tan's writing style
Description of amy tan's writing
The introduction of Amy Tan
Don’t take our word for it - see why 10 million students trust us with their essay needs.
Fish Cheeks In Amy Tan’s “Fish Cheeks”, the author intrigues the reader very early on in the story. Tan tells about how she is in love with a boy named Robert, who was the minister’s son. It seemed very apparent that she really liked him, until her mom invites his whole family to come celebrate Christmas Eve with them. The reason this was a big deal is because Amy and her family are Chinese and Robert’s family is ‘as white as Mary in the manger’ (pg. 110). Tan just knows in her heart that Robert will never give her a chance, especially after being to her house and seeing the different culture right before his own eyes. Her dad points out to everyone at the table that the fish’s cheek is Amy’s favorite part to eat (pg.111). How could she not
Judy Fong-Bates’ “The Gold Mountain Coat” discusses the childhood of the narrator who is a Chinese immigrant living in Canada. The narrator, even at a young age, possesses such admirable keen observation as she is able to notice the environment and even the situation of people around her. Living in a small town that is “typical of many small towns in Ontario” with only one Chinese family neighbor, the narrator is the only Chinese child. With the nearing day of arrival of John’s family, the narrator feels uneasy of her new responsibilities.
The transition from childhood to adulthood can be challenging. There are many things to learn and let go. Sometime teenagers can dramatize certain events to make themselves seem defenseless. Amy Tan, Chinese-American author, makes her Chinese Christmas seem insufferable. In Tan’s passage “Fish Cheeks”, Tan uses diction and details to exemplify the indignity caused by her Chinese culture.
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.
This is due to the fact that the individual may be going through a stage where their cultures may be contradicting making him feel alienated. One way this is shown in the story is, how the persona, who is half Australian and Chinese, describes his personal appearance by saying, “I caught a glimpse of my poo-brown eyes and flat yellow nose; then I just looked down at my feet as they slunk away”, in this quote we see that the person is describing his personal appearance through imagery, in doing so he is demonstrating his half Asian side. However, we see that he uses emotive language in order to make the reader understand how the boy feels about his appearance. Especially saying how his feet “slunk away”, in other words he is ashamed of his appearance. Later on in the story we see how he describes the Australian kids through, “They had sandy hair, pale freckly skin and blue eyes that could read the board from the back of the room without corrective lenses”. We see in this quote how the he uses imagery to describe them however instead of using poor emotive language he uses a description that practically praises them. In doing so I noticed that the boy hates his Asian side and he thinks looking Australian is better showing how he feels contradicted by his personal image. This teaches me not to be judgmental to bicultural individuals as it may be adding fuel to the
Christmas Eve dinner came about and it became evident that her family had just about taken mixed race to another level. She had a cousin, Rebecca, that was married with a child and their small family was white and Jewish (Senna 296). Danzy’s sister had three children that were half Pakistani and they lived in England (Senna 296). Her brother was married to a Chinese woman and they had a young daughter together (Senna 296.) Carla Latty, Anna’s orphaned daughter, was cohabitating with an Indian woman. Senna discovered that at this family dinner, some of them are blood related and are just meeting for the first time. She recognizes the history that they all share in some shape, form, or fashion. Yet, it is not a day of rainbows and lollipops. Danzy and her sister have hurt each other and there is tension. Her brother and his wife hide their infant in the bedroom upset that the other children present had infected their baby. Her cousin’s daughter has declared herself as a lesbian at the age of eleven. Despite all of the obstacles and hurdles her family has faced, Danzy considers the Christmas Eve dinner “a victory” (Senna 301). Danzy’s brother says that “Anybody who finds him offensive can get the […] out” about a gift given to his child (Senna 300). That was his way of approving the
amy tan, a gifted writer, had the chance to change those images, to dispel the public's misconceptions and to forge a new asian american identity. instead, she copped out on her obligations, meekly reinforcing every conceivable stereotype.
The Essay written by Amy Tan titled 'Mother Tongue' concludes with her saying, 'I knew I had succeeded where I counted when my mother finished my book and gave her understandable verdict' (39). The essay focuses on the prejudices of Amy and her mother. All her life, Amy's mother has been looked down upon due to the fact that she did not speak proper English. Amy defends her mother's 'Broken' English by the fact that she is Chinese and that the 'Simple' English spoken in her family 'Has become a language of intimacy, a different sort of English that relates to family talk' (36). Little did she know that she was actually speaking more than one type of English. Amy Tan was successful in providing resourceful information in every aspect. This gave the reader a full understanding of the disadvantages Amy and her mother had with reading and writing. The Essay 'Mother Tongue' truly represents Amy Tan's love and passion for her mother as well as her writing. Finally getting the respect of her critics and lucratively connecting with the reaction her mother had to her book, 'So easy to read' (39). Was writing a book the best way to bond with your own mother? Is it a struggle to always have the urge to fit in? Was it healthy for her to take care of family situations all her life because her mother is unable to speak clear English?
First, the story ¨Fish Cheeks¨ shows a story of how a girl named Amy “finds herself” through a holiday dinner. Amy has a crush on Robert, a 14 year old
Gish Jen’s “Who’s Irish” tells the story of a sixty-eight-year-old Chinese immigrant and her struggle to accept other cultures different from her own. The protagonist has been living in the United States for a while but she is still critical of other cultures and ethnicities, such as her son-in-law’s Irish family and the American values in which her daughter insists on applying while raising the protagonist’s granddaughter. The main character finds it very hard to accept the American way of disciplining and decides to implement her own measures when babysitting her granddaughter Sophie. When the main character’s daughter finds out that she has been spanking Sophie she asks her mother to move out of the house and breaks any further contact between them by not taking Sophie to visit her grandmother in her new place. The central idea of the story is that being an outsider depends on one’s perspective and that perspective determines how one’s life will be.
In the story "A Pair of Tickets," by Amy Tan, a woman by the name of Jing-mei struggles with her identity as a Chinese female. Throughout her childhood, she "vigorously denied" (857) that she had any Chinese under her skin. Then her mother dies when Jing-Mei is in her 30's, and only three months after her father receives a letter from her twin daughters, Jing-Mei's half sisters. It is when Jing-mei hears her sisters are alive, that she and her dad take a trip overseas to meet her relatives and finally unites with her sisters. This story focuses on a woman's philosophical struggle to accept her true identity.
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.
In the short story, "Two Kinds" by Amy Tan, a Chinese mother and daughter are at odds with each other. The mother pushes her daughter to become a prodigy, while the daughter (like most children with immigrant parents) seeks to find herself in a world that demands her Americanization. This is the theme of the story, conflicting values. In a society that values individuality, the daughter sought to be an individual, while her mother demanded she do what was suggested. This is a conflict within itself. The daughter must deal with an internal and external conflict. Internally, she struggles to find herself. Externally, she struggles with the burden of failing to meet her mother’s expectations. Being a first-generation Asian American, I have faced the same issues that the daughter has been through in the story.
June-May fulfills her mother’s name and life goal, her long-cherished wish. She finally meets her twin sisters and in an essence fulfills and reunites her mother with her daughter through her. For when they are all together they are one; they are their mother. It is here that June-May fulfills the family portion of her Chinese culture of family. In addition, she fully embraces herself as Chinese. She realizes that family is made out of love and that family is the key to being Chinese. “And now I also see what part of me is Chinese. It is so obvious. It is my family. It is in our blood.” (Tan 159). Finally, her mother’s life burden is lifted and June-May’s doubts of being Chinese are set aside or as she says “After all these years, it can finally be let go,” (Tan 159).
People long to be part of what is accepted, to be considered “normal”, even if it means rejecting who they really are on the inside because of their cultural differences. In the short story “Fish Cheeks,” the author Amy Tan describes a personal experience of being embarrassed in front of her crush Robert by her own family. Tan describes her teenage struggle to reconcile her feelings toward mainstream and Chinese cultures revealing her difficulty in establishing her identity as an American.he author as a teenager looks up to the mainstream American culture because she considers her own Chinese ways inferior,and so she desires to be like them or other American girls. Tan marvels at Robert’s American features and associates him with “Mary in the
She depicts the hardships of growing up within the multicultural family as a first generation Chinese-American girl and later woman. The focal point in most of her writing are the trials and difficulties related many mother-daughter relationships. She based these story's on her own personal experiences growing up. Their parents put pressure on Amy and her brothers to maintain their Chinese traditions and culture throughout their childhood. With almost a sense of rebellion the children tried very hard to fit into the American society. "They wanted us to have American circumstances and Chinese character," Tan said in an interview with Elaine Woo in the Los Angeles Times (March 12,