Fish Cheeks

Immigration from China to the United States, and consequently the establishment of Chinese American culture, began in the 19th century. While there were small waves of immigration earlier in the century, the most significant influx of Chinese immigrants occurred during the California Gold Rush. Subsequently, many immigrants chose to stay and were employed for the construction of the transcontinental railroad. However, these Chinese immigrants faced severe racial discrimination in the United States, particularly from European American communities. Confronting violence, they sought refuge with their own company, creating neighborhoods that eventually evolved into what are now known as “Chinatowns.”

Anti-Chinese sentiment proliferated under the rhetoric that Chinese immigrants were “stealing” wages and jobs that European Americans believed were rightfully theirs. This sentiment culminated in the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, which prohibited the immigration of Chinese laborers to the United States for 10 years. The act was extended in 1892 by the Geary Act, requiring anyone of Chinese heritage to carry identification papers. It was further extended in 1902 and ultimately made permanent in 1904.

The Chinese Exclusion Act was not repealed until 1943 with the Magnuson Act, which lifted the ban on immigration and, for the first time, provided a path to citizenship for Chinese people already residing in the United States. However, the act still had its restrictions, such as denying property-ownership rights to Chinese Americans and setting an annual quota of only 105 immigrants per year, many of whom were students seeking to study at American universities.

All of this coincided with the “Second Red Scare,” or McCarthyism, which reached its peak after World War II and at the start of the Cold War with the emergence of Communist leadership in Russia and China. This alarmed many Americans, and thus it became a period of public fear and paranoia over the possible rise of communist ideologies in the United States. Consequently, many students, initially intending to return to China, were compelled to become citizens due to the fear that they might use their “American” education to support the newly formed Communist China (Han, Yelong. “An Untold Story: American Policy toward Chinese Students in the United States, 1949-1955.” The Journal of American-East Asian Relations, vol. 2, no. 1, 1993, pp. 77-99). It was around this time that Amy Tan’s parents would have immigrated from China to the United States, fleeing the warfare and unrest resulting from the Chinese Civil War, which lasted from 1927 to 1949.

After the Immigration and Nationality Services Act of 1965, Chinese immigration experienced an increase with subsequent waves of immigration consisting of professionals and students. The 1980s also saw a rise of undocumented aliens immigrating to the United States in search of manual labor. Another common form of entry that continues to this day is through immediate relatives who are American citizens. Tan’s “Fish Cheeks,” published in the 1980s, would have been written during this third wave of Chinese immigration and at the back end of the Cold War. While racism and discrimination still persist in multiple forms to this day, the writing in Tan’s essay is a reflection of anti-Asian sentiment in the United States at this particular moment in time. It is a response to a white America grappling with the residue of anti-Chinese views and policies from the 19th and early 20th centuries. Tan’s writing also expresses a reality that is universal to many children of immigrants in the United States, which is the struggle of generational and cultural differences alongside the desire to assimilate.