Explain your personal life to match songs to you
Amy Tan describes several conflicts that she experiences during this dinner. She desires Robert and his caucasian features, and wishes she could be white and have a slim American nose like his. She is unsatisfied, in that moment, with everything that makes her Chinese, including her own features and especially the traditionally Chinese food that her mom is cooking. In the American context, this food seems foreign and strange.
Her mom, a wise woman who knows her well, recognizes this. She softens her reproach with a western gift, the miniskirt, but tells her that she should not feel shame in her heritage, and that she should be proud and confident as a Chinese person. The interesting idea at the end of the passage is that, although she felt embarrassed in the moment by the food her mom was preparing, they all happened to be her favorite foods. This captures the cultural conflict that the narrator internally feels; she is Chinese, and loves many aspects of her culture, but feels ashamed of them when she experiences in the American context.
