Champion Of The World Analysis

Forms of media that deal with minority races and their encounters with a dominant race explore a wide variety of themes. In many cases, the plot of such media displays the hardships a race must go through, yet have many key differences. Maya Angelou's "Champion of the World" and Amy Tan's "Fish Cheeks" have many similarities and differences which are crucial to each story. To begin, the analogous points within both texts are the narrators age, and being suppressed by white culture. Firstly, in Fish Cheeks, it stated that Amy was 14 years old. In Champion of the World, it is implied that Maya is in her teens, as she referred to the men drinking as older boys, handled cash at the cash register, played with the children and etc. Finally, being

To begin, in Fish Cheeks, the relationship with white people is positive, while in Champion of the World, the relationship is clearly negative. In Fish Cheeks, the relationship is positive because of the fact that Robert's family accepted the Tan's proposal of attending their Christmas dinner. Furthermore, Robert's family were moreorless respectful despite clearly not enjoying the dinner. If their relationship was not positive, Robert's family would have responded in a more vulgar way. This is evident from the fact that Robert's family did not take any action, and rather acted embarrassed, with Robert looking down and Robert's family still being respectful. However, in Champion of the World, there is clearly tension between the black community and white community as slavery had recently been abolished. Furthermore, paragraph 16 displays that felonies have continued to be committed on the black populous by white people. To add on, paragraph 17 mentions black people are considered to be only a bit higher than apes, which shows a negative relationship between the races. Finally, the messages of both texts are clearly contrasting. In Fish Cheeks, the message is about shame, as evident by Amy not enjoying foods she likes, and her mother's message to her. Amy was not proud being Chinese. In Champion of the World, the message is about pride. The Brown Bomber's boxing match was symbolic of this pride. At the time, blacks were clearly mistreated and considered inferior, but the Bomber's victory gave the black people hope and pride. That's how both stories are