The short narrative essay "Fish Cheeks" by Amy Tan recounts the Christmas Eve dinner that her family had arranged with the minister's family in their home. Being a Chinese in America, Amy recounts how she was left anxious about inviting the boy who's her crush and his family over for dinner and worries that he might think them inferior.
The given line from the short essay is Amy describing what she saw when her mother was preparing for the dinner. Her mother's act of removing <em>"black veins out of the backs of fleshy prawns"</em> presents <u>the use of precise language that describes what she saw her mother do</u>.
