Explanation to my Found Poem:

This found poem represents the conflict in the short story “Fish Cheeks” by the Chinese-American author Amy Tan. Throughout the story, the conflict lies in where the main character/Amy herself, faces challenges with accepting her family’s culture and traditions.  She fights against herself (internal conflict) about the culture she should embrace and what she should do about fitting in with her classmates and friends who are not Chinese. She is embarrassed about the Chinese culture and its customs.  When Amy finds out that her crush, Robert (an American)  has been invited to a Christmas dinner at her house, she further emphasizes the point that she doesn’t want to be a part of the Chinese traditions and describes the food as foreign and unordinary. She does this even though the food she described were her personal favorite. For example, in paragraph 6, Amy’s father burps loudly and surprises the guests, Amy feels stunned and embarrassed even though she knew that it was a polite Chinese custom. I tried to show the internal conflict by using words such as strange, appalling, stunned, throughout the poem to express the main character’s embarrassment towards her identity and traditions. Another example of this would be in paragraph 7, where it explains Amy’s true intentions on why she is conflicted against her culture. Her mother explains to her: “You want to be the same as American girls on the outside, but inside you must always be Chinese”, “Your only shame is to have shame”.  This reiterates the point that Amy is always Chinese inside, as stated when she thought about the words of her mother long after the events on Christmas dinner, and claimed that the dinner had included all of her favorite foods. It is ironic how Amy describes her favorite food as foreign. I included the main character’s initial feelings at the start and slowly progressed it towards the point of realization.

In my design, I drew a giant fish as in one of the dishes in the story. It represents the embarrassment, realization,  and character development within the short story. Chinese-American identity is very interesting, and many people like Amy try to fit in, and notice that they can be perceived differently. Chinese American Identity.