Fish Cheeks & Shen Yun

Amy Tan's short essay "Fish Cheeks" conveys an important message about accepting one's culture in a place where it is not the standard. Tan sends this message through dialogue and descriptions. The narrator's mother tells her daughter that "inside [she] must always be Chinese" (Tan 7) while giving her an American-style skirt. These actions reveal that the mother is saying even though the the narrator may look American on the outside, on the inside she is Chinese. This idea is central to the piece, and can be appreciated by many other minorities in America. For example, the Chinese dance troupe Shen Yun performs all across the United States. Their show is not completely Americanized though. Despite their predominately white audience, they maintain many Chinese aspects in their performance. The most obvious example of this is that their costumes and dances are all based off of traditional Chinese ones. Beyond that, the booklet listing each dance is divided in half, with one part in English and the other Chinese. Additionally, before every dance number background information is read in both languages. Through the use of traditional dances and costumes as well as language, Shen Yun is able to be Chinese on the outside as well as on the inside. Their devotion to Chinese culture reinforces Tan's message and provides an example of how to keep in touch with one's heritage.

Disability Today

Nancy Mairs wrote her piece 'Disability' in 1987, but its message about the media's representation of disabled people is still relevant today. Mairs states that television programs "deny the existence of [her] and [her] kind absolutely," meaning almost every show that airs does not include a single disabled person (Mairs 5). This can be seen just by turning on the TV - there are no disabled news casters, athletes, lead actors. A movie about Steven Hawking, a genius who has amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, recently came out in theaters. It has advertisements on every channel, but, interestingly enough, most of them only show Hawking when he is abled. Even films with disabled characters try to cover them up. Mairs argues that hiding disability can hurt the abled as well as the disabled, since disability "may enter anybody's life" (Mairs 5). It is always possible to become disabled, and yet abled people still hold disdain and even repulsion for disabled people. This can be seen in the Pro Infirmis video about creating mannequins based off of the bodies of the disabled. As seen in the video, when the disabled mannequins are put into shop windows, abled passersby shy away from them or look at them with contempt. Without exposure to disability, these people are unable to see disability as a "normal characteristic" (Mairs 7). As Mairs suggests, including disability into the media will help abled people realize it is a normal part of life.

The Pro Infirmis Video