Fish Cheeks

“Fish Cheeks” is a personal essay, which relies on the author’s unique experience in order to expound and examine a meaningful event in the author’s life. This essay’s rhetorical structure immerses the reader in the perspective of her 14-year-old self to explore the relationships between the desire to assimilate, shame regarding one’s cultural heritage, and pride in one’s roots. The essay follows Tan’s experience of a particular Christmas Eve meal and, in the last two paragraphs, provides a different perspective than the one experienced at the time of the event. The tone of the essay is conversational, rather than formal, which is a common technique when relating a personal narrative. This easy tone allows the author to establish an intimate rapport with the reader, immersing the reader in a sense of storytelling. Tan is also relaying the story from the perspective of a 14-year-old, so the tone also reflects the anxieties and insecurities of a young girl. The essay was published in Seventeen, which implies that the intended audience was most likely teenage girls. Tan may have hoped to reach girls who would relate to her experiences as a teenager.

In the essay’s opening paragraph, Tan’s choice of language and economical prose quickly outline its main preoccupations, while also alerting the reader to important expository elements such as timeline and setting. In this way, the essay has both utilitarian and emotional purpose: It tells the reader the who, what, and where of the story while simultaneously laying the groundwork for Tan’s feelings and the larger thematic concerns. Already, the key theme of Shame About One’s Cultural Heritage is evident, infecting nearly every line of Tan’s essay. As she describes her crush, Robert, Tan likens him to “Mary in the manger” (Paragraph 1). This comparison reveals the inner workings of Tan’s 14-year-old mind. The religious imagery elevates him to a place that Tan sees as above herself. This is later emphasized when Robert and his family arrive for dinner and Tan “pretend[s] he [i]s not worthy of existence” (Paragraph 4). Tan’s choice of language here is also quite exaggerated, reflecting both the shame that she likely feels in the presence of Robert’s overly white and American qualities and also the anxious ruminations of a teenage girl in the presence of her crush.

As the essay continues, Tan’s use of figurative and descriptive language continues to highlight her embarrassment and shame. She describes her own family and traditions negatively, deeming her relatives “noisy” and traditions “shabby” (Paragraph 2). While her mother prepares the food for the Christmas Eve dinner, Tan uses simile and personification to instill the reader with her own sense of doom and disgust toward the impending meal. The squid is described as having “their backs crisscrossed with knife markings, so they resembled bicycle tires,” while Tan details the rock cod’s “bulging eyes that pleaded not to be thrown into a pan of hot oil” (Paragraph 3). Tan’s shame reaches its height near the end of the essay when her father announces to the table that her favorite food is fish cheeks. As the title of the essay is evoked, the decidedly non-American fish cheeks come to symbolize Tan’s shame. What was once Tan’s favorite food now brings her embarrassment. Her pride and enjoyment of her own culture has been warped by her desire to fit in with the American, and therefore white, culture that surrounds her.

This leads to another of the essay’s key themes: Generational Differences and the Desire to Assimilate. Throughout the essay, Tan obsesses over the differences between her Chinese culture and American culture. One of the first pieces of information that Tan reveals about her 14-year-old self is her desire for “a slim, new American nose” (Paragraph 1). This desire for a new nose indicates Tan’s longing to assimilate into white American culture. Throughout the essay, Tan is preoccupied with wondering what Robert and his family will think. When she learns they have been invited to Christmas Eve dinner, Tan posits a series of rhetorical questions that imagine the ways in which Robert and his family will be offended by her Chinese family and traditions. While her mother prepares a menu of what is later revealed as Tan’s favorite foods, Tan can only see this food as grotesque. During the dinner, Tan constantly studies Robert and his family, watching over their reactions. Her entire experience of Christmas Eve is filtered through Robert and his family. Instead of coming to her own conclusions, she relies on what she imagines Robert and his family think. This vigilance causes her to “suffer” during the dinner, rather than enjoy it (Paragraph 8). Robert’s family becomes a stand-in for the American culture from which she feels estranged and rejected. Due to this estrangement and fear of rejection, Tan comes view her Chinese heritage as a burden, rather than a source of pride.

Tan concludes the essay with two paragraphs that compel the reader to consider the essay from a new perspective. The two prevailing themes of Shame About One’s Cultural Heritage and Generational Differences and the Desire to Assimilate meet and are transformed into The Celebration of Difference. This is demonstrated through the speech Tan’s mother gives her after the Christmas Eve dinner guests leave. The mother’s lesson for Tan, which warns against her obsessive desire to be American and her shame of being Chinese, is also a lesson for the reader, acting as a kind of thesis statement. It suggests that one should take pride in one’s differences and that feeling ashamed of these differences risks the authenticity of one’s identity. This moment is a private and intimate one between mother and daughter, and it is notably different from the rest of the essay, which is mostly filled with Tan’s descriptive and busy observations of their Christmas dinner. This contrast signals the reader to pay close attention to it. The following paragraph, which concludes the essay, invites the reader to share Tan’s perspective as she revisits the event many years later. From a distance, Tan is able to finally understand the importance of her mother’s words. This move toward a more adult perspective validates the mother’s lesson in the prior paragraph, showing the reader that it was a valuable lesson, though Tan did not fully comprehend to what extent when she was younger. Her mother’s lesson is further cemented by the essay’s final words, and the realization that the food her mother chose to prepare that evening was all of Tan’s favorite foods. Tan asks the reader to reexamine the Christmas Eve dinner from an alternative lens, one where Tan is proud of her heritage, rather than ashamed of it.