At the end of "Fish Cheeks" by Amy Tan, the narrator describes her mother B. As a wise woman. The narrator is fourteen, she has a crush on the Minister's son. The whole minister's family is invited to Christmas Eve dinner. She is afraid of what they would think about their "shabby Chinese Christmas", their noisy relatives and their Chinese food. During dinner, she feels ashamed of her father's manners. When dinner is over, and after everyone has gone her mother gives her a present and tells her that the narrator wants to be like American girls in the outside, but in the inside, she must always be Chinese. There is no shame in being different.
