Capturing Cultural Insecurities In Fish Cheeks, By Amy Tan

Capturing Cultural Insecurities Through Symbolism “Fish Cheeks,” by Amy Tan, is a short story written from the perspective of herself as a little girl. It is about an experience she had as a child, where her mother invited the minister’s family over for Christmas dinner. Coincidentally, Tan had a crush on the minister’s son, which was already causing her a great deal of anxiety. To add to her anxiety, Tan’s mother decided to serve an assortment of traditional Chinese dishes to the minister's family, which Tan was completely ashamed of. Although Tan was horrified at the moment, she now deeply appreciates what her mother did for her that day. Tan uses a great deal of symbolism in this short story to show the many different feelings she had

There is one passage in this piece that reads, “She was pulling black veins out of the backs of fleshy prawns. The kitchen was littered with appalling mounds of raw food: A slimy rock cod with bulging eyes that pleaded not to be thrown into a pan of hot oil. Tofu, which looked like stacked wedges of rubbery white sponges. A bowl soaking dried fungus back to life. A plate of squid, their backs crisscrossed with knife markings so they resembled bicycle tires” (Tan). This story is only made up of about five-hundred words, so this passage takes up a good chunk of it. This probably means that Tan is trying to tell us something, considering she spends so much time emphasizing this. The scholarly essay, “From Raw to Cooked” by Susan K. Kevra explains that this emphasis on rawness could represent the innocence and immaturity of Tan at the time this story was written. In an article called “The Social and Emotional Adjustment of Immigrant Children: A Review of the Literature” by Michael Aronowitz, there is one quote that states, “More immigrants than natives were rated poorly by their teachers on measures of anxiety, aggression, inability to tolerate frustration, low self esteem, dependency and poor relations with peers” (Aronowitz 241). This specific study was done in Sweden, but this article generally speaks about all immigrants, and even though Tan is not an

“The Social and Emotional Adjustment of Immigrant Children: A Review of the Literature.” The International Migration Review, vol. 18, no. 2, 1984, pp. 237–57. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.2307/2545949. Accessed 20 June 2023.
Greenberg, Melanie. “The 3 Most Common Causes of Insecurity and How to Beat Them.” Edited by Lybi Ma, Psychology Today, 6 Dec. 2015, www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-mindful-self-express/201512/the-3-most-common-causes-insecurity-and-how-beat-them#:~:text=The%20kind%20of%20childhood%20you,can%20all%20contribute%20to%20insecurity.
SUNG, BETTY LEE. “Bicultural Conflicts in Chinese Immigrant Children.” Journal of Comparative Family Studies, vol. 16, no. 2, 1985, pp. 255–69. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/41601550. Accessed 15 June