Amy Tan's "Fish Cheeks"

Amy Tan has written often about how it feels to be caught between two cultures. Explain how this short narrative illustrates the tension between two cultures that she felt as a teenager.


On this short narrative, Amy is clearly ashamed to have an American family over for Christmas Eve and have dinner, because obviously the culture differences would be very different for one another. She was concerned with what her crush and her crush's family is going to react at the table with such strange behavior made by her family. Her mother noticed that she had been embarrased by her cultural differences, but as the years passed she realized that being ashamed of her culture was something that was something that she shouldnt of had felt.