Mother in Fish Cheeks by Amy Tan and My Mother’s Garden by Kaitlyn Greenidge (Essay Sample)

The short stories “Fish Cheeks” by Amy Tan and “My Mother’s Garden” by Kaitlyn Greenidge both have mothers who have significant contributions to propelling the story and serve as role models to their daughters because of the lessons they teach their children and the resilience they display. Both of the passages depict struggles of feeling out of place around peers, trying desperately to fit in, and then feeling embarrassment and shame when they do not. If the mothers had not acted as role models, the story would not have had as strong of a theme.

“Fish Cheeks” by Amy Tan tells the tale of a teenage girl experiencing extreme shame and embarrassment toward her Chinese culture and being devastated when she found out her white crush was invited over for Christmas dinner that year. She finds the dishes her mother prepared humiliating and is terrified of her infatuation thinking her Christmas was too out-of-the-norm for his liking. Her crush and his family come over for dinner and eat the food that had been prepared for them, subtly expressing dislike. Amy is mortified and has intense feelings of shame. In paragraph 4 her mother gifts her a miniskirt in beige tweed, stating, “But inside you must always be Chinese. You must be proud you are different. Your only shame is to have shame.” This excerpt exhibits role model behavior, as she is expressing to Amy that she must embrace her culture and be proud of who she is. She reveals her sympathy toward Amy with the beige tweed miniskirt symbolizing western standards, but then also stresses the fact that Amy should not be humiliated by her culture by choosing a particular menu for the dinner party. Paragraph 4 claims, “For Christmas Eve that year, she had chosen all my favorite foods.” While a young Amy did not understand the lesson her mother was trying to teach her at the time, her older self fully appreciates the decisions her mother made to help her embrace the culture she was born into. This is another example of Amy’s mother acting as a role model for her daughter because of the lessons she is trying to teach. Amy is struggling to accept who she is, and her mother communicates reasonable concern for how she is feeling and gives her a lecture on confidence and being happy for who she is. The lessons Amy was taught and the certain article of clothing she was gifted let her know that her mother understood how humiliated she was at the dinner and, consequently, allowed her older self to appreciate what her mother was trying to teach.

Furthermore, Kaitlyn Greenidge’s “My Mother’s Garden” also reveals the narrator’s mother as a positive role model for her daughter. Despite poverty and other hardships, she still manages to succeed in being a full-time graduate student and employee. A sentence from paragraph 21 explains that, “My mother is radically honest, one of the few people I know who is incapable of lying.” This selection asserts Greenidge’s mother as an honest and sincere person, affirming the fact that she is a role model for her daughter. Moreover, the mother demonstrates the positive traits of a role model by constantly laboring for her family to be in a better living condition. Paragraph 4 makes this clearer by announcing, “That spring, my mother got up at 5 every morning to work in the garden before she drove to her full-time job and then to class. When she finally came home, in the dusk, she worked in the garden again before coming inside to make my sister and me dinner and then staying up to study and write papers.” This sentence is describing the extreme work she puts herself through daily to provide for her family. In Kaitlyn’s eyes, her mother is the complete opposite of the stereotypical “welfare queen” as described in her prestigious preparatory school. She is an indubitable role model to Greenidge and is fiercely dedicated to her children.