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Christmas Dinner By Amy Tan Essay

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Recommended: Immigrant assimilation into american culture

The top destination for Chinese immigrants to migrate is the United States (Raquel Rosenbloom and Jeanne Batalova Par. 8). The United States allows for lower living costs and higher economic freedom which attracts the Chinese. Although, Chinese immigrants face difficulty attempting to assimilate into American culture while trying to merge Chinese culture with American culture. Amy Tan highlights this complication by narrating an embarrassing story about her household hosting Robert and his family for Christmas dinner, including shameful dishes and embarrassing traditions at the time. Tan negatively describes her Chinese cultural dishes as strange meals and provides an extremity of visual images relating to her relatives and food throughout …show more content…

Tan’s mother creates a strange menu filled with popular Chinese cultural dishes: “Tofu, which looked like stacked wedges of rubbery white sponges” (Tan Par. 3). Tan compares her Tofu to sponges to narrate the shame she will experience when Robert sees various assortments of her cultural dishes instead of his normality of American meals. Tan wishes for the Chinese group to recognize this shame and to form an appreciation toward their different traditions and cultures. Amy’s mother aids Amy in the process of assimilating into American culture while also reminding her of her original heritage as well: “... ‘You want to be the same as American girls on the outside’... ‘But inside you must always be Chinese” (Tan Par. 7). Tan’s mother gifts to her a miniskirt that consists of beige tweed to prove to Amy that it is satisfactory to be involved with two different cultures. By forcing Amy to feel a lack of pride in her culture, Amy can reflect and appreciate her culture through a positive perspective. Tan hopes this profound outlook on a balance of cultures will enable her Chinese readers to endure that point of view as well. Tan uses a variety of distasteful comparisons leading to strong visual images throughout her story to show her previous disdain towards her Chinese

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