Fish cheeks door Amy Tan

Title

The title of this short story is Fish Cheeks. I think it’s a good chosen title because in the story her father gives her fish cheeks.

Nederlandse vertaling:
Vissenwangen

Author
The author is Amy Tan. She’s born at February 19, 1952 in Oakland, California.
She graduated from high school in Montreux (Switzerland) and received her master’s degree in Linguistics at the San Jose State University.
In her youth she had hate feelings about her Chinese culture and wanted to be just like the American Girls.
Her work has been translated into twenty different languages. For her first book (The joy luck club) she won The National Book Award and also the L.A. Times Book Award.

Time
The story plays at Christmas-evening. She tells about her past when she was fourteen years old but at the end she’s a lot of years father.
It could take place in 2003.

Place
It takes place in the house of the I-person.
It plays somewhere in America.

Structure
Autobiographical.

Narrator
The story is told by the I-person but I think that the author herself is the I-person.

Characters
I-person:
She is a Chinese girl who wants to be just like an American Girl. She’s in love with the son of the minister but she shames herself for the way her family act when the minister’s family for Christmas dinner.
Robert:
He is the son of the minister and he’s a beautiful boy.
Father and mother:
Her father is a real Chinese man. He burps at the end of the dinner and tells the mother that she cooks very well. Her mother is a very nice woman.

Theme
Shame, you can learn that you must be proud of your own culture, because everyone has his own.

Summary
It’s about a Christmas Eve Dinner. She tells how she embarrassed herself because of the habits from her family and culture.
Also because her crush at that moment is by the dinner with his own family.