Amy Tan and Stanley Crouch both share their own unique story, yet share the common theme of assimilation. Throughout Tan’s “Fish Cheeks”, it clear to see she is exploring the powerful, yet sometimes inhibiting influence of culture and her personal genetic background. During the course of Christmas Eve dinner, her parents are presented with her boyfriend. While many parents would especially act well mannered, this story shows just the opposite. “My relatives licked the ends of their chopsticks and reached across the table, dipping into the dozen or so plates of food”, gives a wonderful visual of the action taking place for Amy and her boyfriend Robert. While Amy may infact find this behavior quite normal in her every-day life, this certainly appears new to Robert and as a result he most likely questions her family’s traditions. Tan does an incredible job manifesting the emotions she feels throughout the evening of embarrassment. Such words as, cried, disappointment, despair, wanting to disappear, and stunned, all allow the reader to feel what she is experiencing. While the story appears quite devastating and full of embarrassment, Amy concludes it’s not all about the outside appearance. Her mother ends the evening with a valuable lesson, “You must be proud you different. You only shame is be ashame.” While Amy may want to be like all the other American girls, she will always remain Chinese on the inside and that genetic background should not affect the way people view her as an individual.
In contrast, Stanley Crouch pulls in more life stories that support his understanding of assimilation. According to Crouch, assimilation has been seen as the destruction of true identity. Throughout this historical analysis of race, sexism and Americanism, it is clear that assimilation is not always as easy as it’s thought to be. The intermingling of cultural influences is what truly makes assimilation superior in our nation today. America has simply become what Crouch describes as, a melting pot. With hundreds of different race, sexual orientations, religions and languages, our nation is full of a mix of cultures rather than one by itself. As Crouch states, “American identity is never fixed or final; we are always working toward a better and deeper recognition of how to make one out of the many.” This idea that we as a population are consistently adding more to our melting pot is quite compelling. While it maintains its identity, new layers are constantly added as we continue coming together. With the historical information and personal witnessing in Watts, he primarily focuses on black separatism. The main message from Crouch states, “Our surface differences are far less important than what we have in common and what we will ourselves to be, as men and women and Americans.”
While both stories differ from one another, they are also very similar. Amy Tan’s description of her family’s Christmas Eve Dinner in “Fish Cheeks” focused primarily on staying true to your genetic cultural background even when its tempting to put on a mask of what is the norm. Likewise, Stanley Crouch’s story of “Goose-Loose Blues for the Melting Pot” leads the message that we as a society and larger nation are full of unique individuals. The intermingling of cultures is great- fresh ideas are brought into our education, entertainment, music and much more. If we can begin accepting who are, as Amy Tan did herself, we can move forward and accept cultures as a whole, as Stanley Crouch encourages us to do.
For my link, I chose to include is a picture of the common world globe. Instead of the well-known globe, I found one with several people of different cultures, representing a nation as a whole. The idea of the melting pot is symbolized in this photograph.
http://www.lili.org/forlibs/ce/sable/course2/images/world.jpg
